[btchplz]

Has anyone experienced any rubbing on the front tires with the stock size? I just replaced the BF's with some Eagle F1's and the dealer is telling me that they are rubbing. They say that's the reason why my car is squeaking from the front end.

Has anyone seen any TSB's for tire rubbing on the factory sized tires? I think the dealer is just looking to blame this on my bad ass tires. It seems like everything I put on the car that is not from the factory they like to blame for anything that goes wrong.

Any info you guys can provide would be cool!

 

[EEZ GOAT]

there is a strut rub problem on these.

 

[btchplz]

there is a strut rub problem on these.

Do you have any more info? Has the dealership found a solution?

 

[EEZ GOAT]

Do you have any more info? Has the dealership found a solution?

yes there is a TSB out on that and the dealers should know about it. it has something to do with the camber angel
http://www.gtoforum.com/showthread.php?t=7236&highlight=strut+rub

 

[btchplz]

Thanks for the info. Now off to the dealer I go.

 

[Walked]

Does anyone have a TSB number on the issue by chance? I havent been able to find one.

 

[bemeyer]

Does anyone have a TSB number on the issue by chance? I havent been able to find one.

It's not an official TSB, rather an "internal memo." This is as of two or three weeks ago when I had my tires replaced and alignment covered 100% by GM.

Good luck with yours.

 

[Walked]

It's not an official TSB, rather an "internal memo." This is as of two or three weeks ago when I had my tires replaced and alignment covered 100% by GM.

Good luck with yours.

That was my understanding as well, but I had heard mentions of a TSB.

I'm going to give it a month or so, see if the problem arises for me. If it does, I'll try to see what I can get from the dealership, otherwise I'll just put 235s on the front, no huge loss.

 

[J.E.T.]

It's very well known that there is a strut rub issue on these cars and your dealer should know it. If they won't help you align it properly go to another dealership......quick.

JET

 

[the WRIGHT one!]

Has anyone experienced any rubbing on the front tires with the stock size? I just replaced the BF's with some Eagle F1's and the dealer is telling me that they are rubbing. They say that's the reason why my car is squeaking from the front end.

Has anyone seen any TSB's for tire rubbing on the factory sized tires? I think the dealer is just looking to blame this on my bad ass tires. It seems like everything I put on the car that is not from the factory they like to blame for anything that goes wrong.

Any info you guys can provide would be cool!

I can tell you that I just bought 255/45/17's for my 04 gto, thinking that an extra 5mm on the inside and just a little more height would be great, but let me tell you for the rim that they used and the 245/45/17 tire they put on from the factory you can not deviate from this without using spacers or different rims. After I noticed that the 255's wouldnt fit, I looked at the struts and found that the factory tires had scraped the paint off the front struts; with the help of road debris Im sure; and that the major hang up was the weld on the strut where they put it together. Keep in mind that a tire of the same size made by a different manufacturer will not always have the exact same deminsions. I even bought the exact same brand BFGKDWS. There is no room for any guessing on the front of these cars!

 

[GM Kid]

Yep, the stock 245s are a tight fit in the front wheel wells. I wrote that earlier post to which someone supplied a link. The fix was to lessen the amount of camber. If I look down the side of my car now (after the dealership made the adjustment), I can tell that the tops of the front wheels don't tip in as much as the tops of the rears.

Handling seems fine, so I don't think much changed. The car didn't get squirrelly or anything.

 

[BostonF4$]

Some must be different than others. I have 3/4 original tires on the car w/ nearly 24,000 miles on em...no strut rub. There was SOME inner wear on the passenger side due to the inner fender plastic cover being loose. I even saw it on the lift and technician pointed it out. I think it's weird that some people have huge problems and some have none. It seems like the '05s have the most issues from the posting on forums

 

[rwilson831]

I have been to two dealers and finally they fixed the alignment and charged me. This all took place after I purchased tires to replace all four of the original ones at 20,000 miles. Since I had the tires rotated ever 6000 all four of the G-force tire were destroyed. I since put Yokohama tires on the car and GM now states that is the problem. It seems that they will weasel out of any situation. It is really frustrating when the people at the delership are aware of this problem but won't help. I have also been in contact with the nhtsa. For the first thousand miles after they adjusted my camber it didn't seem to rub. It rubs bad enough now that it causes problems with the rotors and God knows what else. I will eventually bite the bullet and replace the struts with aftermarket ones but my only fear is that it will void the warranty for anything else. I have never seen grown men act like such weasels!

 

[Lehrschall]

The stock settings for camber call for -.2 degrees plus or minus .5 degrees. However, I haven't been able to get more than -.2 degrees on the stock wheels and tires without the inside of the tire rubbing the struts.

I'm on my second GTO running in autocross. To get a competitive negative camber (-2.2 degrees) I use wheels with a 1/4" offset. This gives me room to kick the top of the tire back towards the strut. In this case I back off the camber set screw completely and push the wheel assembly towards the strut until it bottoms out. I change the camber back and forth from stock to race settings each weekend we have an autocross event. I now stick a thin piece of cardboard between the tire and strut when I switch back to stock. I rotate the tire to verify that I didn't miss the setting and that there is no rub. I've had to reset this a few times when I've tried to push more than a 0 degree stock setting.

You can check this pretty easily by raising the car on a jack and spinning the wheel and tire with something like 0.030" cardboard. The wheel assembly drops and changes about 2 degrees from the loaded measure. The wheel and strut assembly will move together, but there is a little additional closing of the gap between tire and strut as a result of bearing clearance, etc. This is why you need to use the cardboard to insure the loaded clearance is enough to prevent rub, heating, and tire failure.

 

[Cottonfarmer]

Some must be different than others. I have 3/4 original tires on the car w/ nearly 24,000 miles on em...no strut rub. There was SOME inner wear on the passenger side due to the inner fender plastic cover being loose. I even saw it on the lift and technician pointed it out. I think it's weird that some people have huge problems and some have none. It seems like the '05s have the most issues from the posting on forums

Same here. I've got an 05 with 19,500 miles and no strut rub whatsoever. I pulled the front tires last week to get a close inspection of this issue and saw no paint rubbed off the strut towers or scuff marks on the tires.

 

[arch&69]

Now I'm wondering why the HSV GTO's can run 245/35R19, yes 19's, and I also wanna know if they are having strut rub. Or was Pontiac just being stupid and maxing out the camber on the US GTO.

 

[Cottonfarmer]

Now I'm wondering why the HSV GTO's can run 245/35R19, yes 19's, and I also wanna know if they are having strut rub. Or was Pontiac just being stupid and maxing out the camber on the US GTO.

This is just a thought on my part with nothing factual to back it up but I think most of the strut rub problems reported on this forum are the result of the alignment getting whacked out of adjustment by potholes, parking curbs, etc. Sometimes we encounter these things with no damage and sometimes we don't. Front ends can get knocked out of alignment at times with minimal impact loads.

Now that being said, the GTO has very little clearance between the tire and the strut tower. Mine only has about a quarter inch of room. It wouldn't take very much of a road or curb impact to put that tire right up against the strut tower and then I would be in the same boat as others have reported here. Being aware of this issue, I frequently check my front tires for any sign of strut rub and if I see it, off to the alignment shop I go. I sometimes wonder why GM didn't recognize this problem and maybe make the wheel offset a bit larger to provide more room for the tire in case the front end gets out of whack. Someone at GM HAD to have known this was a potential problem. -Jim

 

[Lehrschall]

This reprint of an earlier exchange regarding stability of cambers settings might help. I and another GTO autocrosser were seeing our camber settings move. Mine was changing after reusing the stock bolts more than 6 to 8 times.
(From a June posting
I've had some recent success. I'm running Kumho V710s on wheels that have 1/4 " more offset than the stock wheels. With this setup and the camber adjustment screws backed off I'm able to get 2.1 and 2.2 degrees negative camber measured on the Hunter alignment system. This is with the wheel assemblies pushed up against the stops.
The tech manual says to first torque the strut to wheel assembly bolts to 64 ft lbs, then 72 ft lbs, then using a special GM service tool rotate the bolts an additional 90 degrees. The same manual says to replace these bolts each time you adjust the alignment. The set of four bolts and four nuts runs a little more than $40 retail.
I found that getting 90 degrees of additional torque requires a different force depending on the "age" of these bolts. My theory is that the bolts get stressed or work-hardened as they are torqued to the additional 90 degrees and become less elastic. After reusing the bolts the torque required to get 90 degrees progresses from about 100 ft lbs with a standard click torque wrench to 130 ft lbs* without getting more than 45 degrees.
*130 ft lbs worked the last time out and the camber held, but when I went back to reset my stock camber setting I found that I had a stripped nut and had to cut it off. I broke down and purchased another set of bolts and nuts. I found that the new ones worked and held the camber with the 90 degrees extra rotation at the lower torque.
My routine has been to realign the car before and after each autocross event. On a couple of occasions I've tried to push the negative camber limits for the stock tires and wheels of about 0.5 negative degrees and created a rubbing tire. This has caused me to re-adjust and then re-torque. I believe I re-torqued the failed bolt between 10 and 12 times.
My new plan is to re-use the bolts no more than four or five times or until the 90 degree rotation takes more than 110 ft lbs. At his point I assume the bolt clamping through heating, cooling, and the associated variation in loading is no longer predictable.
I'd like to find an equivalent bolt and nut combination at a lower price, but right now it looks like a more regular replacement schedule is the answer with newer bolts providing enough clamping force with less torque. I'm also considering replacing the stock wheel studs with a set long enough for me to run spacers and constant autocross setting. (I'd be okay with the trade off between re-alignment time and added wear on my stock tires).

 

[Cottonfarmer]

This reprint of an earlier exchange regarding stability of cambers settings might help. I and another GTO autocrosser were seeing our camber settings move. Mine was changing after reusing the stock bolts more than 6 to 8 times.
(From a June posting
I've had some recent success. I'm running Kumho V710s on wheels that have 1/4 " more offset than the stock wheels. With this setup and the camber adjustment screws backed off I'm able to get 2.1 and 2.2 degrees negative camber measured on the Hunter alignment system. This is with the wheel assemblies pushed up against the stops.
The tech manual says to first torque the strut to wheel assembly bolts to 64 ft lbs, then 72 ft lbs, then using a special GM service tool rotate the bolts an additional 90 degrees. The same manual says to replace these bolts each time you adjust the alignment. The set of four bolts and four nuts runs a little more than $40 retail.
I found that getting 90 degrees of additional torque requires a different force depending on the "age" of these bolts. My theory is that the bolts get stressed or work-hardened as they are torqued to the additional 90 degrees and become less elastic. After reusing the bolts the torque required to get 90 degrees progresses from about 100 ft lbs with a standard click torque wrench to 130 ft lbs* without getting more than 45 degrees.
*130 ft lbs worked the last time out and the camber held, but when I went back to reset my stock camber setting I found that I had a stripped nut and had to cut it off. I broke down and purchased another set of bolts and nuts. I found that the new ones worked and held the camber with the 90 degrees extra rotation at the lower torque.
My routine has been to realign the car before and after each autocross event. On a couple of occasions I've tried to push the negative camber limits for the stock tires and wheels of about 0.5 negative degrees and created a rubbing tire. This has caused me to re-adjust and then re-torque. I believe I re-torqued the failed bolt between 10 and 12 times.
My new plan is to re-use the bolts no more than four or five times or until the 90 degree rotation takes more than 110 ft lbs. At his point I assume the bolt clamping through heating, cooling, and the associated variation in loading is no longer predictable.
I'd like to find an equivalent bolt and nut combination at a lower price, but right now it looks like a more regular replacement schedule is the answer with newer bolts providing enough clamping force with less torque. I'm also considering replacing the stock wheel studs with a set long enough for me to run spacers and constant autocross setting. (I'd be okay with the trade off between re-alignment time and added wear on my stock tires).

What you say makes perfect sense. I have encountered the same thing with head bolts on some of the newer tractors we use on the farm. They are torqued to a specified value and then rotated another half turn. If for any reason the head bolts have to be removed, they are to be replaced with new bolts only and never the old ones. It seems they are designed to stretch only the one time. When loosened, they never rebound back to their original state.

Now the info you provided leads me to wonder whether those fellas who are having the strut rub problem have ever had their front ends adjusted at an alignment shop or at the dealership. It could also be, for whatever reason, that the dealership may have made adjustments to the front end before the new car was sold and the "technician" put the old faithful GP on the bolts while tightening them and overtorqued them.

Food for thought anyway.

Thanks for providing that info. When I have to have any alignment done, I now know that to be on the side of caution I will demand that new bolts be used and torqued to specs and spend that extra 40 bucks. Lot cheaper than a new tire. -Jim

 

[Lehrschall]

Sounds like the best way to go. I've always waited for the local dealer to order and receive these bolts because they don't stock them. If a dealer or alignment shop does not have them on hand, then they have to be re-using them. I also doubt that the mechanics use the special tool. If you don't do it yourself, I'd ask to see the used parts. (Not a bad idea for any replaced parts).