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hi, my freind has an 01 mondeo estate with the duretech deisel engine and has a fault with the camber angle.he found out by going to the local ford dealer that these models especially the ex exec's (which he has) have a problem with camber and all four wheels have to be readjusted. my friend asked them that when it is sorted would it be ok and no more problems to which he got, the car might be good for loading it up at the most twice in a year without throwing the camber out again! what i want to know is why make an estate car ,which will obviously be used as a pack donkey,with such dodgy running gear? all replies are appreciated..
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If it is any help, mine were all out when I got my Mondeo in 2002 (it was a 2001 model). Had everything all realigned on the laser tracking at Micheldiver's in Hampshire (can I mention names?).Camber was out a bit. Has all been fine since with just a routine readjustment about a year ago. No uneven wear or steering pulling.
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thanks yobi for the reply, personnaly i would have thought that when the camber has been set it shouldn't move. i only noticed how bad it was when i accompanied my freind to a tyre garage (he was complaining that the rear onside tyre had a slow puncture) when i was guiding him into the garage from behind, it looked as though the rear wheels were going to pop off the car because of the amount of positive camber. the suspition of the camber being out was confirmed when the mechanic took a wheel off and all of the inside edge was worn down to the canvas!
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Took my Mondeo (03 model) to a garage last week to enquire about uneven tyre wear.
Fronts were toe in and should be toe out. Rears were not brilliant on the Camber and whilst they could be adjusted the benefit would have been minimal and not worth the risk.
Adjusting Camber is not done lightly. If it is way out then either someone has fiddled with it or something on the car has been bent. The current Mondeo has only one suitable place for jacking with a trolley jack - in the middle between the wheels. Some careless mechanics will try to jack it up on the more accessible tie bars (not sure what they are called) with a serious risk of bending them and thereby putting the rear wheels way out of alignment!
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Red Baron, I think you can wave goodbye to your front tyres after about 7000 miles, as I did, if the garage has set them toe out, they should be parallel. Mine were within Ford tolerances but on the toe out side and scrubbed the insides of my new tyres, to bald in 7000 miles. I got myself a Trakrite gauge and did them myself. Didn't need to jack the car up either, front track rod ends are accessible from the wheelarch and rear adjustment via the eccentric bottom arm bolts from underneath the back. Rears should be set to: 2.0 mm toe in, + or - 1.0 mm, fronts: 0.0 mm + or - 1.0 mm.
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CASTOR not Camber.
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it just strikes a wrong chord with me, the fact that the garage we went to said that the camber gets thrown out so easily, and the fact that it almost always happens on the estates, i think this would have been serious enough for ford to recall the affected models get the potentially dangerous fault fixed, because what is the point of having an estate car if you can't take advantage of the extra space??
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kith,
Very interesting to read that. The chap looked it up in his book for an 03 TDCi. My toe in was 1mm, now adjusted to nearer 2mm toe out as per book. I shall keep a close eye.
If yours were very worn after just 7k miles, maybe the camber on the front was tilting too far inwards.
jc,
I definitely mean camber, not castor. Castor is the 'shopping trolley effect' and, I believe, does not have such a great impact on tyre wear.
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Toe-in or out is castor.Camber is the angle of the wheel to the vertical.For example,you frequently see negative camber on hi-performance cars.Red Baron-you may mean camber but a lot of the correspondents are talking castor.Castor can also have a serious effect on tyre wear,handling and general steering feel.
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>>Toe-in or out is castor.
It is not. It is definitely not.
Imagine looking at the car from above.
Toe in is where the LH wheel is pointing to the right of straight ahead *and* the RH wheel is pointing to the left of straight ahead. i.e., the wheels are not parallel. (The idea is that under the application of rolling and drive forces, the compliance of the suspension allows the attainment of correct, near parallel alignment)
Zero toe is where the wheels are parallel.
Castor is when the axis of the (probably virtual in any modern car) king pin intersects the rod surface ahead of the centre of the tyre contact patch. Or, as some people call it, tea trolley effect, because it tends to align the wheel with the direction of motion.
However, as you say, castor does have a strong effect on steering feel, particularly at low speeds. As pneumatic trail, or castor tends to increase with speed, it isn't such an issue at higher speed.
Number_Cruncher
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Red Baron,
The settings he's looked up are the old settings for the Mk1 (and possibly the Mk2 ?) Mondeo; 2.0 mm toe out + or - 1.0 mm. The Mk3 is as I stated above, 0.0 mm (parallel) + or - 1.0 mm. Also I wouldn't think there's anything wrong with the camber on mine, I replaced the worn tyres and since setting the front wheels parallel (0.0 mm) I've done 8000 miles and the tyres are wearing even. Tell the chap to get a new book ;-)
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right my freind had another garage look at it yesterday and they discovered that the rear,tie rods?, were bent and throwing the camber out so the price of fixing it has jumped from 40quid to 150. not much to say that its dangerous the way it is.
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I seem to remember Esther Ransten doing a number of consumer Watchdog type shows about early Mondeos which pulled to the left.
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What\'s for you won\'t pass you by
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