When we purchased our 08 Camry Hybrid it came with Bridgestone tires. What I'm wondering is has anyone else had problems with their tires wearing on the inside. I've had numerous alinements by both the local Toyota dealer and a local tire company. I've been told that the car is in alinement. I replaced the first set of tires around the 19,000 mile mark. The Toyota dealer recommended switching too Cooper tires. They wore the same as the Bridgestones. We now have 135,000 miles on the car and are on the fourth set of tires. Any Help out there ?

 

Toyota has no provision for camber adjustment. And camber is what is eating your tires. In the rear - as you did not specify - it does not matter much, but in the front, as tires lean when you turn, it does matter.
Their is 2 ways of fixing this.
1. Buy new strut bolts and replace them. Strut to knuckle.
2. Install camber bolts and have camber adjusted.
You, also, are apparently still on original struts. The way it is, strut bolts brackets may have eventually enlarged bolts holes, due to natural wear, resulting in slight camber sag.
I'll link yopu to my post on struts replacement, you'll see.

 

https://www.greenhybrid.com/discuss/...-07-tch-29253/

Btw, I have close to 60 000 miles on Yokohama 502 tires. They are still good for another 2 or so years. Tread life for them per factory is 40 000 miles. Capishe?

 

Thanks for the info. I know that Toyota sets the hybrid up with either a preset negative or positive camber. When the alinements were done it was always dead on with this setting. I'm a parts guy for a heavy truck repair shop and the guys I work with suggested replacing the struts since per all data there is no camber adjust. I did read your post on the changing of the struts. Great post thanks for the tip and recommendations.

 

Did you read part on camber bolts? There IS way to adjust camber, and inner wear IS bad camber. I am not a truck shop guy, but I do know that much.




As far as I know, and I just went through camber for all four corners, that camber spec for Camry is basically zero degrees camber. Vertical. I do not believe it makes any difference for hybrid or non hybrid vehicle, it's same Camry, just different power train.

 

Yea, you definitely have something weird going on there and I doubt its the tires. Follow the advice above.

I drive a 2008 TCH. I have had 3 alignments at the dealer since I have owned it. My OE Michelins went to around 72,000 miles. I replaced those with a set of Hankooks and they went 86,000 miles. Now I am on a set of Yokohamas and they already have 20,000 miles on them. It is looking like the Yoko's will go to at least 60,000 if not farther.

At 178,000 miles I am still on the original struts. No leaks or noise yet. I am also on the original brakes. No issues there either and plenty of pad left. BUT, I did suffer some strange tire wear and noise around 162,000 miles. Turns out it was the Drivers side front Hub/Bearing went bad and was causing some strange issues. I have read that some folks have had all 4 of them replaced before 200,000 miles and some people have never replaced them with over 200,000 miles. FWIW...

 

Isn't it interesting ^^^^^^ how little tire wear we can have on those cars? Looks like Lite's Camry is "no wearer" for tires also, as both of us are way over the OEM tread life for our tires. I thought, I hit some "hidden treasure" Yoko-s, turns to be - I am not the only one.
Kudos to TCH!

 

So it's vertical front and 1 degree negative rear.

 

I think the slight negative camber in the rear is to counteract the battery weight in the trunk having a tendency to roll over the sidewall on the tire. By adding a little negative camber, the tire will roll up into a vertical stance when the body takes a set in the turn and help keep your contact patch flat to the road.

 

They had to start doing negative rear camber when they came up with independent rear axles. Otherwise, vehicles were very unstable during sharp cornering esp on wet/water. Natural inward lean of a tire with negative camber is adding wider base and sort of creating stable triangle shaped cornering support.
Some makes have it at extreme, like Mitsubishi. Tires lean in several degrees.
Ricers add extra negative camber to front wheels, making more stable cornering.
My boss used to race 2 pure stock cars in Nashville, they were allowed 6 degrees negative camber pass side only, as they were taking only left turns.
Basically, you have to religiously rotate tires to avoid inner tread eaten up by negative camber.