justin, how's this going?

 

pulpz2, i still have my kinetix arms. things are doing ok but again, i only drive my car on the weekends. i dont put enough miles on my car to guage the feathering issues closely. i do have some feathering still on my inside tread. its light & not enough of an issue for me to remove the kinetix arms just yet. i cant help but believe that the non adjustable aggressive caster along with the other "somewhat" aggressive current settings we have are responsible for the feathering. w/o caster adjustment capable front arms i cant prove my beliefs but with all the accumulated information thus far & still the concern we only have one other setting to adjust to see if the feathering can be eliminated. on several cars ive have owned in the past there was always a tolerance on toe & camber before feathering became an issue, in our case it seems that we keep trying to pinpoint a particualr toe setting to eliminate the feathering. this is nuts, theres obviously another reason that makes our tolerance so small. caster is the last known possibibility that hasnt been tampered with enough that may just give us some freedom. out caster is very aggressive & as we know "non adjustable". im curious to see what would happe if we could drop 2* or more caster with our current settings...........just a thought!

-justin

 

I tend to agree with you . The tolerance on the toe is pretty tight. But the problem is, no one going with adjustable caster setups. Do you know what effect the NIsmo suspension has on the caster anlge? Apparently, the feathering goes away with the NIsmo setup so I wonder if it reduces the caster.
But I can't believe that Nissan engineers would not understand that aggressive caster would lead to adverse tire wear. Apparently, this is common information amongst suspension technicians.

I think Nissan wanted this car to hit the road tunned for performance. With that came aggressive alignment settings (toe out for improved turn in and aggressive caster and camber angle). This is just my guess.

Personally, I'm willing to spend a few thousand on suspension mods to improve performance but I'm only going to do it if I know its a permanent fix for the feathering.

Oh, may want to get yourself om the class action law suit against NNA. I wouldn't dream of unloading my car but If I can get a few bucks back from Nissan to help cover suspension mods I'll take it.

http://www.sheller.com/Practice.asp?PracticeID=145

 

pulpz2, where/what is the basis of your statement that "Nismo suspension solves feathering"?
TIA

 

Here and there on various threads. Seems like most people wiht modified suspension aren't having the feathering problem. I'm not saying this with absolute certainty and thats why qualifed my statemnt with "aparently".

"Apparently, the feathering goes away with the NIsmo setup so I wonder if it reduces the caster."

Have you read something that contradicts this? If so, please post.

 

i have heard a few nismo suspension owners saying that the feathering is still appearent. my opinion on this is that the nismo suspension stiffens the car enough so that the car doesnt nose dive under braking as bad & doesnt roll in the corners as bad as the stock suspension or some of the other aftermarket suspensions out there. youll notice that the "growl" from the feathering is most noticeable when braking. the force put on the front tires when the weight is distributed to the front (at our current alignment settings) really makes the feathering issue more obvious/noticeable. i believe the stiff nismo suspension eliminates some of the nose dive & such as i mentioned above potentially eliminating some of the feathering but not all of it. i believe that the nismo suspension owners have seen that the feathering became less appearent in a particular amount of time as opposed to the factory suspension. this led them to belive they had eliminated it. but hey, it does slow the process but i cant say for sure it totally eliminates it. this is still better than what we have for options to date! i honestly cant say the nismo suspension doesnt eliminate the feathering as my statements are pure speculation & i personally dont have the nismo suspension...to be honest, im really surprised that some of the suspension experts & those that deal with alignments here on this board havent chimed in & gave more facts about what causes feathering & why we are dealing with it. im no expert but there has to be a reasonable explanation as well as a permanent fix. i have certainly been willing to lessen the aggressive alignment settings & give up some handling to allow my expensive 19" toyo tires last a bit longer. i dont track my z so its not much of a trade off in my situation...........
does anyone know for sure what the 2005 alignment specs are? are they different than the 2003-04 settings? did they add caster adjustment to the front suspension? if they did than i belive my thoughts about the caster are true, otherwise nissan would not have addressed caster adjustment at all..........

-justin

 

I had extremely bad feathering at 5k miles. Had to replace tires. At 9k I bought 19" rims and noticed NO feathering on the old tires. I had nissan align for the new rims. I got feathering 5.5k miles later, and had a local shop change the Toe to .02 on both sides. Hopefully this will fix the problem.

Before it was at .09 and I was experiencing feathering on the inside, and slighlty less on the outside. (tires would have been gone at 10k miles).

 

Jason from Performance has confirmed that the '05 has some new part numbers in the front suspension which he will be posting soon.

Only time will tell if they fix the feather...I don't even know if they allow for camber adjustment.

 

thats for that info 350zenophile, where does jason plan to post this info? here in this thread or in another one?

im sure the 05 allows for camber adjustment, possibly not caster as in our(03-04) case.......

-justin

 

Yeah, I came across this as well. I don't remember which thread it was.

 

if you guys find the thread please link me to it. im very curious to see the 05 specs!

thanx,
-justin

 

I think he might be posting it in here:

Track 2005 engine

 

OK, just a little update. I installed the Hotchkis Stage 1 TVS kit this weekend. Since I had the wheels off I borrowed a digital camera and snapped a few shots. This is 15,900 miles of wear on the fronts.

The feathering is subsiding. As you can see, there still remains slight feathering on the inside and outside tread. They are noticeably load but not overkill. Honestly, if I was not already aware of the feathering issue, it’s likely that I would consider this nominal tire wear - especially considering the RE040 reputation. Owners of other makes of cars complain about how noisy these tires are and they don't have the feathering issue.

Left front has a nail in it and the rear are to the wear bars so I'm replacing the tread all the way around.

 

I wanted to join in this discussion. I have 6300miles with about half on the stock tires and half on my winter set. No feathering or uneven wear on either set. Since my friend has a tire shop with a nice Hunter alignment rack, I thought I would play around with the alignment to see if I could possibly improve anything and maybe prevent future wear. My car is model year 2004, build date 12/03.

Here are the before and after specs for the front tires, the only ones I fooled with:
* = degrees

Front Left
After Before
Toe 0.11* -0.09*
Camber -1.05* -1.01*
Caster 7.62* 7.62*

Front Right
After Before
Toe 0.13* -0.07*
Camber -0.88* -0.82*
Caster 8.39* 8.39*

After Before
Total Toe 0.23* -0.16*

I was aiming for the April 2004 "preferred" toe specification of 0.2* total toe (0.1* left and right). As you can see I ended up with 0.23* total toe. This was quite a change from the previous (new from the factory) setting of -0.16*.

My immediate reaction when I drove it was the car drove like crap. The immediacy of turn in and how quickly the car turned off of steering center was greatly reduced. Before, the car would turn in with the slightest movement of the steering wheel, now it seems to take 15 or 20 degrees before the car turns, resulting in a very disconnected steering feel. One the reasons this I was initially attracted to this car was the immediacy of the steering feel so this is unacceptable for me. I am planning to change it back this weekend. I am undecided if I will go back to my original settings or go to 0 degrees right, left, and total toe which is the other extreme of the specified range. (specified range is 0* to 0.1* left and right).

Before I adjusted the alignment I was thinking that the new settings were a compromise from nissan that favored decreased tire wear at the expense of steering feel. I will let you know what settings I go with this weekend, and how the steering feels as a result.

 

BadDriver, that is exactly my experience. The before toe settings were better for turn in response. The after setting seems like a compromise Nissan came up with to stave off complaints about feathering.

 

+1 here

I had the car aligned by the dealer one week after delivery, and it felt like it was on rails. Very nice, felt in control. In every change after that with new specs the car has gotten looser and looser and all feeling has gone away. Now it kind of floats down the hwy... Still better than many cars I drove before, but not close to what it was when I first got it.

 

Specs call for total toe to be 0.20. What is important is total toe. If left and right are a little different is ok as long as total is 0.20. There can be no variance,0.20 only per nissan spec. I have used two different Hunter 611, supposedly the newest and greatest by Hunter. No they did not read the same,a few hundredths off. Just by rolling car off and putting back on can give a slight different reading. These machines are very sensitive. It is my understanding the inner tire wear is from camber, the toe is used to scuff the outside of tire so wear appears even across tire. To have to put the toe on a set number with no variance and keep it there is crazy. My 2 cents.

 

Inner tire wear will be caused by agressive camber settings in any car. The toe setting is responsible for the feathering or as this website refers to it, "sawtooth pattern."

http://www.familycar.com/alignment.htm

Another resource:

http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete...eral/align.jsp

 

Yes 350zenophile, it states just like I said. They are trying to balance the tire wear by using toe because camber is fixed.

 

Oops, sounded like you were lumping wear and feathering together as the same thing.