During my last oil change I noticed my front tires were wearing abnormally, but my CLS was tracking like a laser and there was no vibration in the wheel. Well . . … except for the sorry rotors when I apply my brakes. Anyway . . … I figured I had developed a camber problem and took my CLS to Sears. As I suspected my camber was WAY off (-16 degrees, WOW!) . Sears fixed it, but when I went to check out at the top of the print out it said , “Acura 3.2 CL: except type S”. I told the manager my car was a Type S and had the 17 inch rims. He agreed it might be different and went away to look it up. 5 minutes later he comes back and says the S type (sic) and the regular have the same settings. I asked, “then why would the print out say except type S”? He tells me, “the tech entered it in wrong, but it doesn’t matter because they are the same”.
My question to any Acura CL experts/technicians/service managers that might be cruising the board is “Are the alignment settings on the CL vs. CLS the same” as Sears says?
To anyone not happy with the handling of their car and you’ve got a few miles on it check your alignment. Putting the car back to spec. totally transformed the handling. I’ll be the first to admit -16 is a ton to be off, but setting it right doubled the stick of the car.
Thanks in advance!

 

There are no differences in camber caster toe however there are differences in turning angle .I suspect the real problem with your car was toe out which is frequently misdiagnosed as a camber problem when looking at just the tire wear.A toed out car will wear the inner edges of the tire very rapidly.I am also curious how they corrected the camber issue they said your car had .Our cars do not have a provision for camber adjustment .Usually if there is a camber problem it is because something is bent .Jens

 

Jen so u are saying that when I took my car in for alignment. That all they adjusted was the toe?

I do understand that our cars need camber kits to keep from rubbing on a drop and 19"s. But I thought that camber kits were needed because the stock camber adjustment didn't allow enough of an adjustment.










Juker008

 

Thanks for the reply. It's good to know that Sears wasn't trying to BS me. Sears used the latest model Hunter 400 alignment station. Very Cool! It strobed LED's down the side of the car to these special reflectors attached to the wheel. The tech under the car turned wrenches attached to the suspension mounting points. When the angle of the wheel moved the strobing LED's picked it up via identical movement of the reflectors. The whole process was echoed by a graphic on a computer monitor. It was very sensative. All the tech had to do was move the wrench a milli meter and the computer graphic changed.
My tires had the exact opposite wear pattern you mentioned. My tires were showing extreme wear on the outter edge. As opposed to the inner edge you mentioned. It's to early to see if the wear has been corrected, but as I mentioned the handling has completely changed for the better!

 

mine always comes up as a 1999 and up 3.2 TL... I hope the settings are the same for that as well.

 

After having my car aligned locally, the mechanic showed me the changes and final numbers but they were for a TL. When they re-did the car as a CL-S, the alignment numbers (specifically the specs) were different.

I, too, have recently experienced excessive inside tire wear on the fronts. Very frustrating to see the Toyo's go bad so quickly. I'm working with the alignment shop to see if the "problem" can be found and corrected as they say the car is aligned properly.