Tramlining, Tyre tramline

Hi Guys,

I have 225/40zr18 V shape directional tyres installed on the car with stock suspension .. Pic below.


The car tramlines allot ... it gets really annouying sometimes and the car is usually very hard to control (rain or dry weather). I tried to do some search on tramlining on the forums but didnt find much info. Googlling showed that some cars suffer from tramllining with low profile tyres and some dont! .. 18" is not really the lowest profile anyway! ...

1st question - Am I the only with with an IS200 suffering from this or does everyone get affected by it too after installing low profile tyres?

I tried lowering the pressure of the tyres to 26 so the side walls of the tyres get abit softer, but didnt help!

2nd question - Someone said on Google that if the car give good steering feedback (eg IS200) then the tramlining will be magnified with low profile tyres, is that true?

I know that my car has been in a accident on the front passenger side, I am not sure of the tyre was hit or of the internal body shap of the car was affected. The shell of car looks fine since they fixed it offcourse. I got the car checked by Lexus (general check) and did the 28 point check in Pedders. Everything was perfect according to the resutls!! ... I also got the allignment checked and corrected!

3rd question - I know that tramlining is affected by the toe-in toe-out. Someone said that it is affected by the caster also, is that true? ... (I dont think they usually check the caster when they do wheel alligment, I dont think they checked mind).

If eveyone here with low profiles suffers from the same issue, then I dont have much to worry about. Otherwise I have some further investigation to do :S

Have you been for a wheel alignment recently? Too much or too little toe can cause it sometimes, but I've yet to experience it in my own car.

What pressure do you normally run in your tires?

I'm currently on 225/40/18 and 235/40/18s with 40PSI all round without any issues

They certainly do check castor, and they should have given you a printout with full before and after figures for all 4 wheels.

If they haven't, you might have to start with an alignment again, and preferably with someone who deals with modified cars and knows something about suspension. Too many corporate wheel alignment people just make sure its in the green zone and push it out as fast as possible. If the last people didn't give you a printout then don't take it there again.

I expect that castor, toe and camber are all affected by tramlining, ie by any irregularity that runs paralell to the tyre's roll, and you should be able to overcome it.

I did wheel alligment 3 times last 12 months for different reasons. Each time with a different tyres shop ... none gave a printout :S ... next time I will ask them if they will give me one before they touch the car.

The 1st time I did the allignment was due to the -tv camber of the front tyres as setup by a previous owner. 2nd was after I changed the shocks to KYB with keeping stock springs. 3rd was after I changed the lower ball joints recently. Since I bought the car until now the car handels the same way in terms of tramlining. Non of the above made a difference

Something that I just thought of actually ... due to the -tv camber that the car had before I got it, the front tyres were worn on the inside. So I moved them to the back and moved the back to the front ... then I got the 1st wheel allignment done ... so these half worn tyres are now at the back ... could they be my problem?

I do have the original 17" wheel, I got them from the guy that sold me the car. 2 of them are also worn on the inside (probably the front ones!) .. is it worth putting them on the car and test? or is it definitly an allignment issue?

The pressures I tried are 35, 32 and 28PSI. Most of the time it was on 32, I only increased it to 35 and decreased it to 28 for testing purposes. Now its on 28.

thanks guys

What brand of tyres are the 18"s? Could just be a characteristic of cheap rubbish. Try the 17"s out & see if the problem persists.
Is it just me or does that front tyre look like the directional tread is facing the wrong way?
28psi is way to low. You should be running at least 35. 38 & 40 seem to be the most common psi with the lads on here with 18"+ rims.

Exactly what I thought also!

What brand of tyres are you running, and as stated run around 40 psi or 38 psi

These are the tyres:

http://www.lexanitires.com/2007/n300_225_40_18.htm

http://www.1010tires.com/Tires/Reviews/Lexani/N3000


I dont think they are the best out there .. there are mixed reviews on them. Does anyone know much about them?


The direction of the tyres is correct. I actually tried reversing them once .. just to see how much worse it can get! ... the situation is bad to start with, so it didnt get much worse!

I will increase the pressure today to 40 and see how I go. It definitly feels much softer now at 28. It helped with the tramlining abit due to the softness, but definitly still there. As you guys said 28 is way too low for 18" to keep driving on, the wheels are gonna touch the ground soon! So I cant keep it this way ... Im guessing at 40 the car will behave like a rabbit on the street!

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/tec...e.jsp?techid=47

I've personally not experienced bad tracking with these cars but then again I have driven much lighter cars with much wider tyres so could be comparing it to that?

Tramlining can be caused purely by the tyre or the aligment, or both combined, since you have already checked the alignment I would be changing the tyres (to the 17s) to see if it improves

Also toe out will make the car feel very darty too, so maybe just get that checked.

I increased the pressure to 40PSI on my way back from work. But it was raining all day in Sydney today, so hard to tell if that made a difference.

I will put the 17" on this weekend and see how I go.

Do Altezza's also have variable pressure steering pump (ie with built-in flow control valve) just like the IS?

My understanding is that this valve will lower the pump pressure gradually as the car drives faster to improve the streering feedback to the driver. May be in my case it is making the car more susceptible to road waves since the pump is not helping the steering as much!! ... (If Altezza's also have such valve in the streeing pump then at least I can eleminate that its not the issue and focus more on tyres)

As far as I know the Altezzas all have speed sensitive steering.

Trying the 17s will be interesting.

Did you turn the tyres over when you moved the worn ones to the back? Probably no effect on tramlining but I always swap any worn edge to the outside on the rear.

Predictably, over the last few years I've built up 4 tyres that have all the edges worn more and the centre 3/4 not! The rears wear the inside from acceleration and the front wear the outside from cornering.

Off Topic, but about the tyre wear on the inside edges.

Has anyone tried the asymetric tyres that are meant to be harder wearing on the inside to cope with camber etc?

I have tz100 firehawks on my car with the outside and inners a different compound than the middle.

I have had great results with these especially traveling the Wainuiomata hill each day. ie closer 15-20k compared to 8k on eagle f1s. And they had been driven hard on.

I will be looking at a second set of these.

i have perelli p7's and they have worn perfectly even with -2.5 degree of camber on the rear

I was going to suggest he upgrade to asymmetricals. I've been running Bridgestone Potenza RE001 on the rear for 1.5yrs & they're not showing any signs of wear running -2.3° camber. The same can't be said for the directional Kumhos that were on there when I got the car.

That's damm good- what rear toe-in are you guys running with -2camber?

Here's a copy of my last alignment, was about 2 years ago now. Nothing special here. Waiting to get new front tyres before getting another one.

OK, so -1.3deg camber on the front takes 2mm toe-in, and on the back -2.3deg takes 3.5mm toe-in.

Its always hard to know how much toe-in to give it when you move outside the stock camber range.

The Front's straight but geeez look at the toe on the rears, its way out.

Ok, just thought I give everyone a quick update on this tramlining problem. It is now officially sorted out .. yeppyyy


I went to Jax tyres to get a pink slip for the rego last week. My rear tyres were worn out. So I moved the front to the back (same V shaped tyres I mentioned in earlier posts). And for the front, I put Falkens.

And that was it ... it was the crappy tyres that I was using!! I am only using the Falkens now for the front and it made all the difference. The car drives like a normal car now .. no side sliding yayyy

I did tell Jax about the problem, and they checked the allignment, they were going to toe it out abit rather then toe in to give more stability in low speeds. They couldnt though, The side wall of the control arm was too soft (rear) and it sort of flexed when they tried to adjust the allignment cam. So all tires are now at zero toe, no toe in and no toe out.

ahh yep good to hear, also never ever deflate the tyres below 36psi cold, you will find regardless of what manufacturers say tyres should have a minimum of 36psi for optimum contact with the road at all times, if you have more people in the car add 2psi or when you are doing highway driving. When you have the pressure too low it can effect the tramlining you experienced. when you under inflate a tyre you will find that the center of a tyre wears less then the sides and vice versa for over inflating.

Update 2:
A year have passed since I installed the new front tyres. Which helped with the tramlining issue, but only temporarily

The car started to tramline again soon after, and got worse over the months. I raised the car today and took the 1 year front tyres out. They are both worn on the inside .... $200 per tyre!

So even after Jax tyres zeroed the toe in/out on both front and rear, they still got worn

I got frustrated with the Tramlining issue. It is definitely a combination of bad alignments and tyres.

Anyways, I put the original 17" back on this afternoon just like the guys suggested 2 years ago. They have old worn tyres on them. Size is 215/45ZR17 as oppose to 225/40R18 that I had on previously.

As expected, the 17" did make a difference. Less tramlining on exactly same roads., the steering is definitely slightly lighter than before, and the not as harsh as it was on the 18" after driving on the same bumps.

I think I'm going to say good bye to my 18"s and get new 4 tyres to the 17"s. I think I should have done that 2 years ago when it was first suggested to me. I will have to do the alignment again.

I will look in the forums for the recommended IS200 alignment places in Sydney. But if anyone knows from the top of they heads, please let me know.

Cheers

This is my last year's alignment results. Too much +tv Camber? (hence tyres worn on inside)

Should I now reduce the +tv camber and get the fronts toed in to 2-3 deg?

How will that affect the tramlining?

Mate forget using JAX and the big names for wheel alignments. They just grab the factory settings and adjust with a that will do attitude. You live west so if your willing to come up to Rydalmere can I suggest www.roadandraceperformance.com.au/ . Peter Hennesy is extremely experienced and knows his stuff better then any wheel, brake and clutch guy I have met. Will work on a Saturday with a bit of notice. Also you might want to invest in some rear control arms. The stock ones are Swiss cheese, replace them with some figs items and all your alignment issues will go away!

Awesome ... they are right behind where I work ... might drop there at lunch to get new tyres and see what he says about the alignment.