Uneven tire and brake wear

[Craig 94 TA GT]

I recently installed front Baer brakes because my old pads were shot. Well, at least one of them was. The outside driver's side pad was paper thin, but all others looked to have at least 1/4" pad left. Also, I noticed that the left front tire (same as the funny wearing pad) had uneven wear. The inside was almost worn all the way down, but the rest of the tire was ok. Wheelworks supposedly did an alignment for me recently (and continually in the past), but it appears my camber or something is off. But their supposed computer tests say it's within range.

So my question is, is this funny brake wear related to my tire wear? If it is, then I guess I need to buy the $100 alignment tool because most other shops claim our camber/caseter is not adjustable
If it isn't related, then I'm not sure what to do. I just don't want to ruin these new, expensive brakes. Thanks for any advice.

[Jeff_in_Atl]

I have found that this car is very susceptible to toe alignment. My car was tramling really bad especially in wet weather. I took it in and they put it on the machine. It was toed out but it was still within spec. He corrected it to zero and it fixed the tramling and the uneven tire wear (wearing out the first inside tread block). I believe that the wider and the stickier the tires are the more susceptible to alignment/tramling it makes the car. Normally if the toe is out it will wear both tires on the inside or the outside.

However I do not see how the alignment would effect the brake wear.

I do think the car manufacturer got away from the brake design like the LT1s have A because it has to be more expensive, and B because the slides made on to the knuckles didn't promote even brake wear. The ones I took off my car did not wear even either. The LS1 brakes mount the pad to the caliper and seam to wear more evenly. Did you grease the metal arms that the brakes slide on? Anti seize will help them.

[Craig 94 TA GT]

Thanks Jeff. I noticed that too....in the rain it feels like I'm gonna wreck the car. Maybe I'll take it back to them and tell them to reset it to 0, rather than 0.09 or whatever reading they did. I'm glad though that alignment doesn't affect the brake wear though...and I couldn't see how it physically could, but wanted to confirm it.

What slides are you talking about? The ones on the LT1 spindles? Thankfully, I hacked them off to install the Baers, which uses a custom bracket. I was already tired of the strange wear and frequent sticking of my calipers.

[Jeff_in_Atl]

You probably hacked them off. The knuckle on the left is the LT1 knuckle. http://www.claire-marie.net/LT1vsLS1_brakes.JPG The 2 tapered bars that stick out the side that the pad ride on.