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I’ve been using the PFADT pure street settings on my GS for about 6 years. Handling is just fine and at this point I think the rubber will age out before it wears out. There’s about 2Ok mileage on the rubber now.
Last edited by FatsWaller; Apr 15, 2025 at 08:05 AM.
I’ve been using the PFADT pure street settings on my GS for about 6 years. Handling is just fine and at this point I think the rubber will age out before it wears out. There’s about 2Ok mileage on the rubber now.
Ditto for me. Been running it on my Centennial GS vert with mag ride since the front Goodyears wore out (down to the steel belts on the very inside edges) at 13k miles due to the OEM alignment.
To give you an idea of why the factory alignment is not the best for tire wear, just before I started a close to 7K mile road trip, I had the alignment checked by a competent shop, and it was 'in the green' according to the factory specs. So off I went, with what appeared to be minimal tire wear. As the trip progressed, I noticed that the front rubber seemed to be noticeably wearing away. At just over 4500 miles into the trip, this what the front rubber looked like.
Maybe a little worse on the outside, but more or less even across the tread width.
This was at a Chev dealer in Missoula MT. I figured I'd never make another 2000 miles on what was left given how fast they were wearing, so the fronts were replaced there. Rears had minimal wear. I should have been paying more attention to the posts about PFADT, because the fronts wore out pretty quickly again, even though the alignment was still 'in the green'. An expensive lesson learned.
I will try and find a good tire/alignment shop to get the alignment into specs using the PFADT Pure Street settings. Don't want to ruin a good set of new tires.
So are the FACTORY SPECS more in line with the DUAL STREET/TRACK-AGGRESSIVE settings?
I've been using the PFADT Street settings on my 08 Z51 for over 6 years and with Michelin Pilot AS3+ tires I got over 30k miles on the first set, and am well over 20k miles on the second set with lots of tread left. The wear bars are slightly closer to the surface on the inside edge of the front tires, which is to be expected for this setting. Handling is fine. Since I don't drive as much now (under 5k a year) as I used to, I'll be replacing the AS3s with a stickier tire when they're ready to be retired (pun intended). But I'll maintain that same Pfadt setting when it gets realigned.
Note- when I first bought this car with 26k miles the tires that came with it had much more wear on the outside of the front tires, so the alignment was more than likely the factory setting. It handled okay but much better now.
Another vote for the PFADT settings here. I put new Conti's on 2 years ago and had them aligned to the street settings, no complaints at all, even wear and great handling.
There is no difference between the nominal PFADT Performance Street settings and the Pure Street settings. The Pure Street document is nonsense because it only gives nominal values and no tolerances. Everything has tolerances. I gave the Performance Street settings to my shop 6 years ago and my Michelins wore extremely evenly and still gave me a 1.29 max G reading on the G meter.
I used Pfadt street settings over factory , hated it. By trial I have now even more radical settings than factory. But the car drives turns and burns like it is in rails. I love it. Who cares about tire wear and the cost on a high performance car? I no do not get that.
There is no difference between the nominal PFADT Performance Street settings and the Pure Street settings. The Pure Street document is nonsense because it only gives nominal values and no tolerances. Everything has tolerances. I gave the Performance Street settings to my shop 6 years ago and my Michelins wore extremely evenly and still gave me a 1.29 max G reading on the G meter.
So are you saying to take the alignment range sheet I posted in the first post to the shop? That gives a range to shoot for.
I used Pfadt street settings over factory , hated it. By trial I have now even more radical settings than factory. But the car drives turns and burns like it is in rails. I love it. Who cares about tire wear and the cost on a high performance car? I no do not get that.
PFADT has more aggressive setting than "Street" but it comes with a price. That is eating through tires at a much higher rate. For a car that is 100% street driven (no track time), why would one want to destroy their tires every 6k - 9k miles? A lot of people do care about tire wear on these cars as a set of 4 tires will run you close to $2,000 for mount and balance.
I'm not knocking you so please don't get me wrong. If you like have more aggressive alignment settings, go for it! For most people, they will never even come close to utilizing 50% of these vehicles handling capabilities while on the street. Like one person posted above. They pulled 1.20 G's utilizing the PFADT Street setting. Which is pretty insane.
So are the FACTORY SPECS more in line with the DUAL STREET/TRACK-AGGRESSIVE settings?
Yes, and its when the car is diving like a caddy for driving miss Daisy, that your not putting enough force in the corners to wear the inside edges of the tires at same rate, that you get the outer edge wear/ need to have the alignment done to Pfad street specs.
So are you saying to take the alignment range sheet I posted in the first post to the shop? That gives a range to shoot for.
Yes, that setting will give great street handling and good even wear. I've attached the PFADT sheet with all their recommended alignments all the way up to full race slicks.
I have to disagree with it being ok for R compounds though. Even on my PS4's, one track day trashed the outside edge of the front tires. The rest of the tire is at 8/32.
I use the Dual Street/Track alignment settings on mine and tire wear is surprisingly very even daily driving the car.
The factory settings on the front of my car were almost at the DUAL STREET/TRACK setting. I believe that if you track the car, with a setting like the above, the tires should see "even" wear as the aggressive driving keeps the tire wearing evenly. If you don't track the car, a setting like the above, will wear it out unevenly if you just street drive it. That's what the alignment shop told me.
So on cars that do high speed runs (straight line). Is it better for the car to have a more aggressive track setting or less aggressive setting when it comes to straight line pulls?
Track alignments prioritize contact patch under corner load and sacrifice contact patch in a straight line. That's why all the aggressive alignments were out the inner edge of the tires when street driven. Straight line numbers will look much different from track numbers.
The factory settings on the front of my car were almost at the DUAL STREET/TRACK setting. I believe that if you track the car, with a setting like the above, the tires should see "even" wear as the aggressive driving keeps the tire wearing evenly. If you don't track the car, a setting like the above, will wear it out unevenly if you just street drive it. That's what the alignment shop told me.
I found this to be true when I was regularly autocrossing the car. When I did the track day, this went out the window and the outer edge of the tire was demolished.
Good Alignment Specs
