Car
MS60, with 19" wheels and coil suspension. The car didn't feel stable at freeway speeds so I got the alignment checked.
The Ugly
Car had almost a half inch of total rear Toe Out... this is a dangerous amount of rear toe out. This much toe out causes the rear to steer the car under acceleration and braking. The car has felt unstable since the first day I got it. The number of alignment problems with this car is getting scarey high... Tesla needs to look into this and take corrective action.
The Bad
Based on a few posts here, I had assumed that coil suspension cars had closer to -1.2 deg of camber in the rear. Well, my car has -1.9 deg of negative camber. Looking forward to wearing out my rear tires in 8,000 miles like the cool air-suspension, 21" wheel guys! Not sure why there is such a variance in rear camber on these cars?!
The Good
Caught this before it caused an unsafe incident and before it destroyed my rear tires. It's a completely different car after the alignment. Stable, confidence-inspiring, very happy with straight-line performance and handling!
Conclusion
If your car feels: Floaty, unstable, steers itself, sways, fishtails... please get your alignment checked. I believe all these problems are related to alignment.
Alignment
Went to my local custom alignment shop: I sat in the car while they aligned it (so it's aligned to my body weight).
In the front I went with a hair toe out. Basically zero toe, but front toe out helps with turn-in response. I was planning on running more negative camber in front, but once I learned how high my rear camber was, I decided to stay conservative with camber in front, and plan to rotate my tires often.
In the rear, went a little heavy with toe-in: ~3/16" each side. With this, I shouldn't get any toe-out under hard acceleration nor braking. In the words of lolachampcar, "More rear toe-in will add straight line stability at the expense of range and, to a lessor degree, tire wear." Given the hot-mess my car has been since I got it... i'm all-in for straight line stability.
Highly recommend this shop for anyone in the Los Angeles, CA area.
MS60, with 19" wheels and coil suspension. The car didn't feel stable at freeway speeds so I got the alignment checked.
The Ugly
Car had almost a half inch of total rear Toe Out... this is a dangerous amount of rear toe out. This much toe out causes the rear to steer the car under acceleration and braking. The car has felt unstable since the first day I got it. The number of alignment problems with this car is getting scarey high... Tesla needs to look into this and take corrective action.
The Bad
Based on a few posts here, I had assumed that coil suspension cars had closer to -1.2 deg of camber in the rear. Well, my car has -1.9 deg of negative camber. Looking forward to wearing out my rear tires in 8,000 miles like the cool air-suspension, 21" wheel guys! Not sure why there is such a variance in rear camber on these cars?!
The Good
Caught this before it caused an unsafe incident and before it destroyed my rear tires. It's a completely different car after the alignment. Stable, confidence-inspiring, very happy with straight-line performance and handling!
Conclusion
If your car feels: Floaty, unstable, steers itself, sways, fishtails... please get your alignment checked. I believe all these problems are related to alignment.
Alignment
Went to my local custom alignment shop: I sat in the car while they aligned it (so it's aligned to my body weight).
In the front I went with a hair toe out. Basically zero toe, but front toe out helps with turn-in response. I was planning on running more negative camber in front, but once I learned how high my rear camber was, I decided to stay conservative with camber in front, and plan to rotate my tires often.
In the rear, went a little heavy with toe-in: ~3/16" each side. With this, I shouldn't get any toe-out under hard acceleration nor braking. In the words of lolachampcar, "More rear toe-in will add straight line stability at the expense of range and, to a lessor degree, tire wear." Given the hot-mess my car has been since I got it... i'm all-in for straight line stability.
Highly recommend this shop for anyone in the Los Angeles, CA area.
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