knivesout

Ok so I drive a 2000 EX coupe, basically stock. Its lowered, as it was when I bought it, and has a SRI.

My tires had been wearing heavily on the inside and needed replacement, it was also pulling a little to the left. Despite these problems, I was getting around 40 mpg with mostly highway driving and a little less with more city.

Since I was driving home over the break, I got new tires and an alignment before I left. The car's been driving more smoothly and dead straight but my MPG went WAY down, I'm getting around 30 mpg on the highway now. About 1k miles after the tires and alignment I also noticed a knocking sound coming from the rear passenger side tire. It's strange though because it comes and goes, it doesn't seem to be too serious of an issue, I'm wondering if the cold has anything to do with it...

Is there any reason why my MPG would take such a nosedive after the new tires and alignment? I realize that because it has been colder, taking time to warm up the car, etc, will decrease mileage but this seems like way too much of a difference from where my mpg was before. Any help's greatly appreciated. Thanks!

J240sx

The rearend noise may be them leaving the rear TrailerArm lose, thats how you adjust the Toe on the rear of a Honda, as for the alignment...do you have Camber kits? If you don't, purchase a set and have it aligned that way, and make sure they align the camber as well and that will help tremendously with MPG.

Boostedawd91

might wanna check to see if your tires are wearing anymore since your alignment. It could be possible they didnt set it correctly or didnt tighten the bolts down. Did they put the correct size tires on?

alphalanos

What kind of tires. If you put much stickier or wider tires on it that could explain it. Or even just normal economy tires maybe difference in the tread and design could be the reason. Are you measuring it in the same conditions? Temperature, speed, stop and go etc.

knivesout

TY for the replies, just got back from the holiday break.

As for the knocking, it seems as though the place that did the alignment barely torqued the lug nuts. After tightening them back up the knocking sound vanished.

My mileage problem is still the same. The only conditions that have really changed is just that the weather has been a bit colder lately, other than that the driving conditions are the same. The tires that I replaced were Hankooks, I'm running Falken Sincera tires now. As far as I know, the tire size and specs should be exactly the same, I kind of just assumed the tire shop knew what they were doing, which could be an incorrect assumption. Checked the tires and they do seem to be wearing evenly now though.

As for a camber kit, I had done some research into that before, but with the problem I was having (excessive wear on the inside of the tire) I was told that an alignment would fix that and a camber kit wouldn't be necessary. Is that true?

boxeocampeon

if you are lowered it will actually be difficult to give you a proper alignment without adjustable cambers

DCRB

toe kills tires way more so than camber. don't believe me? look at a bmw. they come from the factory with camber, and don't have wear issues untill the toe is out of specs. just throwing that out there...

alphalanos

true. just make sure your toe is at zero. they can still do toe without camber adjustment. the camber may be off, but hopefully not by much. get it aligned and ask for the printout. if the camber is more than .5 degrees different on each side then you might want the kits.

D Griff

Check your tire pressure! When it gets a lot colder outside, the pressure is going to be lower (heat makes the air expand, cold makes it contract). Low pressure = worse mileage.

I go to school in Miami, I had my tires pumped up to about 34 PSI. When I drove to North Carolina to my parents place for winter break, the pressure went down at least 10 PSI because it's so much colder.

boxeocampeon

oh yeah forgot about that...with a properly aligned toe there should be no wear

knivesout

Hmm, so looking at the alignment report:

Front Toe
Initial
Left:-0.15, Right:-0.35
Final
Left:+0.05, Right: +0.05

Front Camber
Initial
Left:-2.1, Right:-2.0
Final
Left:-2.0, Right:-1.8

Rear Toe
Initial
Left:-0.15, Right:-0.25
Final
Left:+0.10, Right:+0.10

Rear Camber
Initial
Left:-2.8, Right:-3.4
Final
Left:-2.4, Right:-2.8

I'm no suspension expert, but I'm assuming that these are within reasonable specs? Also will double check tire pressure too, forgot that the lower temps could affect that. Thanks again for the help guys, I appreciate it.

D3vin

Camber does not matter when it comes to short term tire wear. It's all about the toe where it's extensively wearing out the tires completely. If you have more negative camber higher chances of less contact to the ground will result in better gas mileage but would be pointless because if you want better gas mileage you would go narrower tires.

The toe should be set at 0 I believe reading my old reports, and I haven't have a problem with tire wear with -2 and above camber.

knivesout

So would the toe not being set at zero be an issue then?

I also checked tire pressure and it was good....

Jonathannx2

My MPG is really low.
Less than 30mpg I think.
I have a d16 with a short ram intake.