are over sized tires causing my steering components to wear prematurely?

[AEdelheit]

Long arms allow the axle to move in a more linear vertical motion while short arms are more of a arc moving the axle back as it droops' essenitally with short arms the axle has to move forward to move up, long arms just move up. It may sound like a minor differnce but greatly improves suspension geometry and performance.

 

[Herman8r]

Got it. Short arms=short radius as compared to long arms.

 

[cerberusiam]

It is all about thrust vectors on the control arms. Ideally, thrust should be parallel to the lower control arm which means it should be pretty close to parallel with the ground as that is where the thurst is coming from thru the tire. The greater the differenc in angle from the ground to the lower control arm the more thrust is direct into pushing up into the angle instead to just rolling the tire. With the weight of the engine it tries to drive into the ground instead along it, which adds additonal stress to the components and changes the way the steering reacts.

 

[Herman8r]

Just did a check on the wheel offset without taking off the wheel and it appears to be between 6.25 & 6.5. I will have to take the wheel off to get an exact number....but this is close.

Cerberusiam--I noticed your tire size. Are you still using the "Y" style steering linkage? If so--any unusual wear?

 

[cerberusiam]

Backspacing on a stock wheel is 6.25 inches. The only wheels I know that were close in an 18 was a specific set of Fuels and they were 5.75. Everything else was 4.5 to 5 inches. With the wider tire you have to decrease the back spacing some or they rub on the suspension parts, too much and they rub on the fenders.

At 180k the stock y-type had finally worn enough there was slack in all the TRE's. I upgraded it to the t-type and have about 60k miles so far with no issues. The only wear problem I have is from the tires spinning too much.