Not Happy

[DaveEllen]

Just checked my front tyres (don't know why ) inside 15/20mm bald

Had tracking done in March last year..............

Lexus said they'd also redone it after the prang in October last

So another £200 aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

[kev dood]

bummer. I am not looking forward to the day this might happen to me!!

[DaveEllen]

just ordered 2 potenza's from www.mytyres.co.uk £197 delivered.........was £212 in July !!

Note to self.............check this weekly in future :duh:

[Bazza]

how much have you lowered it mr E

sounds like the cambers out

remind me sunday to chat, i know a man who...!!

[Wosket]

nice to see your taking it in good spirit!

[Bazza]

whiskey, vodka...all good spirits

[DaveEllen]

how much have you lowered it mr E

sounds like the cambers out

remind me sunday to chat, i know a man who...!!

-30mm

had tte anti roll bars fitted 4 weeks ago.............

[DUNCAN]

That's odd.....

At 260bhp those front wheels wont be touching tarmac very often..

[LennyLexus]

Dave i've got the same problem,

got car in sept and front tyre insides have gone and rest of the tyre is fine. Lexus said they will re do the geometry but I have to replace the tyres. The bridgestones dont come cheap, so a poor trainee like me had to get 2 continetal part worns.

Anyways I know a good place that can do your chamber adjustment

www.protyre.co.uk not sure if there is branch near you tho. They only charge £41 for chambers and then realigning. I also read somewhere that chambers must be readjusted and wheels realigned after ANY suspension work!!

[SteveAudioX]

how much have you lowered it mr E

sounds like the cambers out

remind me sunday to chat, i know a man who...!!

-30mm

had tte anti roll bars fitted 4 weeks ago.............

The anti roll bar fitment does not alter the camber Dave.

The people who done my alignment couldn't even loosen the camber bolts...

I have to get a new set (4) and bushes, so they can heat up and remove the old ones...

See you at the meet on Sunday.... You have a PM

[DaveEllen]

I'm thinking off creeping over to TTE when the tein kit is done and getting them to make sure everything is tickety boo.

Still mystified why Lexus Bromley didnnt mention it when they did the alignment after my prang.......bet the fitters name was Hutton

[SteveAudioX]

My Tein kits quite nice Dave.. Perhaps you could have a go on pauls with the EDFC.. like the one your going for...

Mines the NA kit.. So no electronic damping controls for me.. it's allen kit and bonnet up

[bigsul]

This is a problem that keeps occuring for a lot of people, me included. When is Lexus going to admit that they are selling cars with incorrect tracking or camber settings, or both?

[DaveEllen]

cant wait to play with the edfc.....

Steve......what ride height are you on......I'm thinking of -40

[Bazza]

found this makes interesting reading

although usa based!

For the IS300, lowering may reduce your ride quality quite a bit. This is because just about all the Japanese-built springs/coilovers are actually calibrated for the lighter Altezza RS200/AS200. These RS200-calibrated rates are usually insufficent at keeping the front end of the IS300 from "soft crashing" on its bumpstops. (Some of you may volunteer that both ends feel worse, but the fact is that butt-dynoing which end of the suspension is causing the rough ride isn't as straighforward as one might imagine.) To reduce the suspension travel of the IS300 yet keep it off its bumpstops over common pavement irregularities, a much higher spring rate and/or higher rising rate is necessary. The only time the ride of a soft-sprung lowered car might feel acceptable is at-speed on a reasonably smooth road, where vehicle inertia is doing most of the body control. To deal with the "soft crashing" at low-to-medium speeds, one can turn up the damping adjustment (which is combined compression & rebound on most shocks and coilovers) to the point where the compression damping is overused in its body control capacity. While it is effective at reducing "soft-crashing" and endows the suspension with a feel of composure, it actually decreases grip and will send harsh vibrations right through the cabin over washboard-type surfaces. To be completely fair, turning up the compression damping past the optimal combination of body control and grip makes the breakaway characteristics much milder, hence why it's often regarded as a "drift tune". Not a lot of grip and hence not a lot of real speed, but extremely easy to manage breakaway and the body just about never misbehaves.

Even apart from the damping overuse issue, lowering will usually also reduce your actual handling performance through excessive camber. This is because 1) the suspension features a fairly aggressive camber curve, and 2) there isn't much range to the camber adjusters found on the car. Lowering the car to any significant degree (1" perhaps?) will dial in so much negative camber that the car won't be able to put down a full contact patch in a straight line nor in the midst of even hard cornering. Any of you who might disagree with this can prove this to yourself if you spend ~$120 to obtain a tire pyrometer and learn how to use it.

The excessive camber issue is worsened if the car is equipped with bigger sway bars. Body roll normally hurts performance on the stock car by putting the wheels into positive camber, but in this case the more positive camber to counter the lowered suspension's excessive negative camber the better. But the sways take that away too. Of course, this is all in addition to TLLTD effects.

Lowering will also do a real job on your tire wear. The excessive negative camber will eat up the inside shoulders of your tires, worsening with higher-performance (read: firmer sidewall and softer tread compound) tires. While this effect may not be as profound with long-lasting, lower-performance tires, check out one of the Falken Azenis Sport that was mounted on my rear axle:

(Don't worry too much on my behalf; this tire has 5 plys in the tread and 3 plies in the sidewall. As far as I could tell, I only ate completely through two plies before I chucked it. )

I think it's kinda funny how the tire is no longer a cylinder, but more of a truncated cone. For those of you who met me at the last car meet, note how mildly my car was lowered, if you even noticed that it was lowered at all. Since my installation of coilovers, my rear camber adjusters have always been maxed out to counter as much negative camber as possible. My static rear camber then was at around -1.1 degree. This undeniable evidence of a truly screwed-up contact patch prompted for the purchase of a tire pyrometer, which told me with surety of how much contact patch I was squandering. Being that I was already maxed-out at the end of the camber adjuster range, I started raising the car using the pyrometer to guage my progress in reclaiming my contact patches. By the time the pyrometer told me that my contact patches spanned across the entire tread width, the ride height was here:

Not very lowered, is it? But it now grips like a mofo to the point the car's dynamic capabilities are currently beyond my ability to fully exploit it. But I'm working on it.

Many people believe that lowering the IS300 enhances handling. This isn't false from a seat-of-the-pants perspective, since lowering the car changes the perception of speed (the lower you sit to the ground, the faster the apparent speed) and reduces the time it takes for the car to "take a set" during corner entry. This owes to two phenomenons: 1) the fact that there's a whole lot less suspension travel to dive through before the shock stops diving because it's sitting on the bumpstop, or 2) due to miscambering, there isn't much contact patch to really laterally accelerate the vehicle much, so the "set" arrives at an artifically low point. All this gives the impression of a quick "set" when you steer into a corner, like that of stiff sway bars. It feels sporty and nimble, but you'll probably get lower skidpad numbers than even a stock car.

Another thing that leads people to believe that lowering enhance's the IS300's handling is the fact that the car seems understeer less. Remember my tire above? The reason the stock IS300 understeers as much as it does is because in maximal-performance cornering, the front wheels go into positive camber way before the rears if the car is aligned to factory specs. Good engineering places the "zero" (point equidistant from the ends of the range) of the camber adjusters at around the factory spec mark. Another way to understand what I'm saying is that the rear tires are simply negatively cambered more. Via lowering, adding a heckload of negative camber past the point of good performance on both ends produces front wheels that are excessively negative-cambered, but the rear wheels are even worse. (Remember that it was my rear tire that I showed you all for dramatic effect. My fronts weren't as bad.) The car seems more neutral because you're taking more contact patch away from the rear wheels.

[Monster-Mat]

alot of that is crap....

the is300 has springs designed for the is300, his statement that the problem is because of Altezza springs blows that out the water.

the car doesnt soft crash on the bumpstops......you would know if it did

anti roll bars do not effect suspension geometery, only chassis dynamics

the reason that alot of tyres are wearing is a very fine line between being in and out of alignment.

on my car i get my tracking and alignments done every 6 months.......and ive had no problems with any tyre wear on the inside or outside edges.

i belive the problem is exagerated on the IS200/300 due to 2 main factors.

1) the engines are heavy , and the weight is over the nose of the car, infront of the forward steering wheels, therefore increasing the scrub on the tyres when cornering......the engine will always have an effect on chassis dynamics

2) the springs are if anything possibly on the softer side, to bring in comfort, if you consider that the is200 enguine weighs approx 40 kilos more than the altezza, that extra 40 kilos is quite a bit more for the springs to hold up

......if the car is lowered you will obviuosly will be increasing the effects of suspenstion geometry change, but if set up correctly and if not changed to drastically there is no reason why you will not have problems

shockabsorbers can also have an effect on tyre wear

[dark_is200]

Just got my tracking done, seems much better now (before was miles out). Well worth getting done - I'm not going to bother with the bushes now since the problem _seems_ better. I went to Elite in Rainham, cost was about 50. Quick to do but a long wait (2 hours) before they started the work.

[SteveAudioX]

Can all of you lowered IS200 owners post your 4 wheel alignment figures, toe,camber,caster etc....

I got mine done today, some of my adjustments are maxxed out too. Just worried as some of the print out is still red.

I had my Tein NA kit fitted and lowered the car about 40mm thereabouts, travelled 900 miles since and the front tyres are worn badly on the inner edges, had 5mm of tread left on the rest of the tire, the rears looked evenly worn but needed replacing anyways as they were down to about 3mm.

Had all 4 replaced today and aligned (maxxed out on adjustments) but need to be sure I won't be buying a new set of front tires tooooooo soon.

Any help and suggestions appreciated.

Also those with a Tein kit, Have you notices any strange noises when going over uneven surfaces....?

[DaveEllen]

Can all of you lowered IS200 owners post your 4 wheel alignment figures, toe,camber,caster etc....

I got mine done today, some of my adjustments are maxxed out too. Just worried as some of the print out is still red.

I had my Tein NA kit fitted and lowered the car about 40mm thereabouts, travelled 900 miles since and the front tyres are worn badly on the inner edges, had 5mm of tread left on the rest of the tire, the rears looked evenly worn but needed replacing anyways as they were down to about 3mm.

Had all 4 replaced today and aligned (maxxed out on adjustments) but need to be sure I won't be buying a new set of front tires tooooooo soon.

Any help and suggestions appreciated.

Also those with a Tein kit, Have you notices any strange noises when going over uneven surfaces....?

Steve,

My understanding is that the wear you have got (same as mine) is due to the camber being out as the camber is set for a ride hieght of X wwhen lowering to Y it changes the camber setting making the tyres increase the to like this / \ as opposed to like this | |

What would be interesting is to find out what the camber settings are for a Sport compared to a SE.

TDi will be doing my camber settings after the TEIN fitting. I will be checking the tyre wear very closely from then on.

[Nodstar]

I had all my wheels off this morning and had new pads all round... Gutted Both of my front tyres are bold on the inside to about a quarter of the way across.. My IS has not been lowered or modified in any way at all.. Does this suggest that having it lowered or not makes any difference..? :tsktsk:

[SteveAudioX]

Is this true........

If an "IS" is lowered, there is no way the camber can be corrected to a degree where there is even tyre wear as the adjusters only have adjustments to accomedate the factory fitted suspension?Even if the settings were Max'd it still means in-correct tyre wear ?

If this is so .... How are any of the tracking centres able to adjust our lowered cars correctly at all ?

What is this Camber kit for ? And does it work ?

[DaveEllen]

Steve,

looks interesting. Wonder who makes it and if JDMParts guru can source it.

Dobedo had his done at a place in Oxted may be worth a PM he sent me the url in chat last week ............www.abbeysports.co.uk (thnk( wrote it don & lost the bit of paper )

Will speak to Mark before I leave when the car is dropped off.

http://www.napsusa.com/napsusa/195-474-K.html

[SteveAudioX]

It's made by Cusco Dave, the same people who produce the Strut brace....

[Rob]

my rear inner tyres are scrubbed quite badly and need to be changed but this i know is to the alignment centre doing a crap job - ill be getting mine redone next week as i have winter tyres on now which are really soft.

[Fargo]

Steve go here for the print outs i was given when i had mine doe via Lex service centre, they set it up as a IS Sport.

i cant make head or tail of the print outs, and dont know why i got 3, but i have numbered them in the order they were done (time stamp top left)