Car pulls slightly to the left after wheel alignment

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

2mm toe too much? 0.87mm is two tenths of #### all. It will make no real difference. If you never rotated the tyres, then you may see some slight feathering but you would get more wear from cornering than you will from 0.87mm of excessive toe in.

 

[grafton]

See, thats what i"m talking bout! QUALITY workmanship. 0.87mm is almost 1mm. As for feathering the only thing that should be feathering is baby birds!! Nothing on cars. Thats the difference between a good alignment & your alignment. Do you tell your customers " yeh done ya alignment & now ya wheels are pointing nearly 1mm in the wrong direction"? "Feathering" should not happen if your caster & toe is spot on, even when cornering. Unless you drive like your ass is on fire. Remember: when your outside wheel is turned in 20degrees, your inside wheel should be 22degrees. If your caster and or toe are not spot-on, the baby birds will appear. Huru Guru....talk soon

 

[vxs93]

i was told by a mechanic at holden that legally the car has to pull slightly to the left in the case of falling asleep at the wheel and having less chance of driving into traffic

 

[grafton]

Yeh thats what we've been lead to believe. Also you should be able to hold the wheel straight with your little finger resting on the steering wheel. If you have to hold it with all your might, then your alignment is not correct. Steep road camber can make it pull a little harder, so try it on a nice smooth flat road.

 

[Brett_jjj]

I get my VS set so the wheel alignment is equal on both sides. I was getting dodgy alignments that I wasnt happy with, the alignment printouts showed different measurments for each side. I went to a few different alignment places and got absolutely nowhere. I was then told about a guy who knows his stuff when it comes to alignments, so I spoke to him, I got him to to set the alignment dead equal both sides. He even had to loosen and move the k frame slightly to get them absolutley spot on, but what a huge difference it made, it handles and steers way better,tracks dead straight, rolls along way better/easier and even gets better fuel economy. This guy said that most alignment/tyre places have the attitude where "close enough is good enough", so the measurments dont quite match side to side on the printouts.

 

[Sabbath']

See, thats what i"m talking bout! QUALITY workmanship. 0.87mm is almost 1mm. As for feathering the only thing that should be feathering is baby birds!! Nothing on cars. Thats the difference between a good alignment & your alignment. Do you tell your customers " yeh done ya alignment & now ya wheels are pointing nearly 1mm in the wrong direction"? "Feathering" should not happen if your caster & toe is spot on, even when cornering. Unless you drive like your ass is on fire. Remember: when your outside wheel is turned in 20degrees, your inside wheel should be 22degrees. If your caster and or toe are not spot-on, the baby birds will appear. Huru Guru....talk soon

:blah blah: A theoretical expert...just what everybody loves.

 

[grafton]

Yeh Brett_jjj, turning your K frame adjusts your caster as your radius rods connect to the very front of the K frame. unless you have adjustable radius rods then this is the easiest way to compensate for the caster. See CLOSE enough isn't really close enough is it? A perfect job makes a huge difference. cheers

 

[glenn l]

0.87mm, what a load of crap. As soon as you back the car off the aligner it all moves and changes the settings a bit any way, the front and rear ends are not mounted solid so they do move. Also you can take it to six different aligners in the same day and have different reading from all of them. If some one is not spending 45 to 1 hour on your alignment there not doing it right, Unless there pretty close to start with. s##t I've spent almost 2 hours on early mustangs and falcons getting them as close to 100% as I can.

 

[Not_An_Abba_Fan]

Ummm....adjusting the K frame will make it track better as you will be aligning the front wheels with the thrust line of the car. Its got #### all to do with caster as the radius rods are attached to the front of the K frame and the lower control arm, guess where the control arm is attached? The K frame dick head. (Not directed at you Brett). So moving the K frame around will change the relationship between the front and rear wheels, and will affect where the steering wheel points, but it will not affect the caster, camber or toe-in; as every one of those angles is set by components that are bolted to the K frame only. (Unless you take into account the strut top which is bolted to the body, which is fixed and can't move anyway. The amount that it will affect the caster by moving the K frame will be minute.

There are varius types of alignments, most people will just do what they can adjust. Most modern cars it's just toe. Some have camber, very few have camber, caster and toe. With the addition of kits, you can get more adjustment out of them to COMPENSATE for road conditions, getting a car spot on to drive well on all roads is impossible. The main result of an alignment from a customers point of view is (in this order) 1: steering wheel straight, 2: driving straight, and 3: reduce tyre wear. I know not everyone prioritises the same way, but from 10 years of doing alignments, that was the general rule. A compensated alignment was the most common to get it to drive straight and have the steering wheel straight. This type of alignment aligns the front wheels with the thrust line, IE parallel to the rear wheels. Perfect in live axle cars, but pointless with IRS as the rear wheels play as much part in how the car points as the front.

There are also many factors that affect the way a car drives, not just the 3 angles that are most commonly measured. There is also king pin angle, axis inclination and included angles to take into account if the car is not driving the way it should after the alignment has been done so that the car SHOULD drive straight and not wear tyres.

To an earlier comment of ballast, yes, it does affect angles, but not so much as to adversely affect the alignment. There are a few exceptions, early Fiats is one, you have to ballast the front and rear seats to adjust them correctly. I think Audi was another one. I remember doing a Fiat by the book and it didn't drive quite right, so I set it up with just the driver in the seat and he never had a problem after that.

I could probably still tell you all the specs for Holden, Ford, Valiant and quite a few Jap cars too as I did that many of them I rarely had to look in the trusty specs book. The EH was fun as you had to remove the wheel to adjust it. Pajero's you had to jack them up to adjust them. I loved the HQ-WB as it was only two bolts and shims. Occasionally they needed a tower stretch to twist the chassis back out so you could adjust them....but I digress....

 

[grafton]

K frame connected to radius rod, radius rod connected to control arm, control arm connected to strut, strut connected to tower. tower not move. Turn K frame, push control arm back = less caster, pull control arm forward = more caster. And yes the radius rods are connected to the k frame.....read the post properly