Negative camber on rear wheels

[Streety82]

Hi all,

I've had my GTI 2 weeks now and yesterday I gave it it's first clean. While doing this I noticed that the rear wheels appear to have a negative camber.

I just wanted to know if this is normal on the GTI's or whether I need to take it into the dealer? I've searched on here and Google and could find anything conclusive.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

[Gnasher]

Just from looks alone, mine also looks to have more negative camber on the rears than the fronts.

I am lowered but had the tracking redone so the rears are dead on the centre of the required camber but the fronts are on the limits of negative camber (still both in the green though on the hunter alignment equipment).

Not sure of the actual figures but when you lower it, it's impossible to adjust the front camber out, whereas it can be done on the rear. In essence, my car should look like it's got more on the front as this couldn't be adjusted out.

[corgi]

Most modern cars will run some negative camber - it increases the grip in cornering as the load forces the tyre to use the full contact patch. The value on road cars is normally in the range from less than 1 degree to small number of degrees... Modern front wheel drive road cars will typically run more negative camber on the rear than the front to promote safer handling (in simple terms, more of a tendency to understeer at the limit)...

For a stock GTI the value, I believe should be -41' (so about 2/3 of a degree negative) plus or minus 30' for the front, for the rear and 1 degree 20' plus or minus 30' for the rear. So from vertical to just over a degree on the front is acceptable and for the rear a degree to almost  2 degrees...

So, your car is probably normal, unless you think it is outside of these values. I don't think the Mark 7 Golf has camber adjusters on the front or rear but changes in toe and caster may bring the camber values back into line if they're out... these things are all related...

Typically, a standard tracking machines will not measure camber (on most road cars camber is not adjustable) for this you would need a 4 wheel alignment machine and, more importantly, someone who knows how to use it 

[Jackie Treehorn]

Hi all,

I've had my GTI 2 weeks now and yesterday I gave it it's first clean. While doing this I noticed that the rear wheels appear to have a negative camber.

I just wanted to know if this is normal on the GTI's or whether I need to take it into the dealer? I've searched on here and Google and could find anything conclusive.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

You would be hard pushed to notice the amount of camber possible just from looking at it, not impossible, but not easy to see.  So my guess would be that its just an optical illusion against the shape of the wing... 

[zal_kindi]

[img]Hello, I'm new to this forum and this is my first post. I live in Abu Dhabi, UAE and drive a 2015 mk7 GTI.  Around 30,000 km (18,750 m) the car stated to make a wining noise form the back which increased in pitch with speed.  I took the car  to their dealer for the regular service and informed them about the noise.  They said that the rear tires were unevenly worse on the inside and showed me how the tire blocks on the insider were somehow not level.  When I sepxpressed surprise that the rear tires can wear this quickly, especially that my driving is not so hard and the fornts showed normal wear, they claimed that all GTI's and R's have this problem.  This is my first GTI so I could not challenge them; however I was not convinced that VW would design a car that chews its tires in such a way.  I took the car to a third party type center and changed all 4 tires to Michelin Pilot Sport 4.  When they checked the alignment, they informed me that the rears had excessive camber and that if I leave them, the new tires would wear unevenly and begin to make noise.  The alignment technicician did not know why I replaced the tires in the first place and why.  He made that remark independently and showed my how much it was out  on the Hunter Machine.  The rear-left camber was -1 deg 41 min and the rear-right was -2 and 12 min.   I decided to let him adjust it and the the rears are visibly more vertical.  I am still concerned how the camber was out by this much in such a relatively new car, and if these people messed with my car and the camber is supposed to be there by design.  What convinced me was the premature tyre wear.  Were the original values normal?

[dubber36]

The type of wear on the rear tyres that causes excessive noise, it often referred to as 'sawtooth'. The inner tyre tread has a stepped degradation on each tread block that can be felt when rubbing your hand over it. This is mostly caused by incorrect toe angles, not camber. Excessive negative camber would wear the inner tread evenly, whereas too much toe in or out will cause the tyre to crab and skip.