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Car pulls slightly to the left after wheel alignment

Not_An_Abba_Fan

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You compensate for the camber of the road with the caster adjustment, not the camber.

Most cars pull left because of the camber of the road, nothing to do with falling asleep or anything else. Most new cars can't be adjusted that much o they still pull to the left, an experienced aligner will recommend kits to be fitted to enable more adjustment.
 

VTowner025

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Thanks, everyone for the feedback, all very useful. I was wondering thou, do there exists wheel alignment data sheets for optimum specifications? in the the print put the second column is the target range, seems to be missing the data, hence I thought there might have been ideal sittings to set to.
 

VTowner025

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Hi Not an Abby fan, had a look at the wheel alignment sheet, the caster alignment data seems pretty near the same with the before and after measurements, I have a question thou, if the car is driving perfectly straight, but the steering wheel is off center pointing to the left, what would be causing this? Cheers
 

glenn l

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Hi Not an Abby fan, had a look at the wheel alignment sheet, the caster alignment data seems pretty near the same with the before and after measurements, I have a question thou, if the car is driving perfectly straight, but the steering wheel is off center pointing to the left, what would be causing this? Cheers

the caster is not adjustable from factroy, but you can get off set plates the change the caster(theres a little plate that clips in a recess that locates the bolt), that small caster movement happens when they reset the camber and toe.
as for your steering wheel it could possably be they havnt centered it properly when they aligned it.
 

VTowner025

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Thanks Glen for the response, I really hate getting wheel alignments, due to past experiences with them, 50/50 Had some good wheel alignments (Pedders in Bayswater), but some really poor ones (tires place at Dandenong, and another place) drove the car away and the steering wheel was on a 5 degree lean? Took it back to them to fix.


Seems I might of have another semi poor experience with this one, car is drifting to the left but also I don't think the wheel was centred correctly before the alignment was done as you mentioned above, grrr, as it is off centre to the left a little when driving on a flat straight road. I would have thought a place like Tyreplus was reasonable good at what they did, but it is very hard to get good reviews from the net for decent place to go for new tires and a wheel alignment done correctly the first time. I checked the tire pressure today also to see if that was causing trouble, and they were a little out too, back right 31 psi back left 37 psi, front right 34 psi, front left 33 psi, seems a little poor on the tire place for inconstant tire pressures. Will be back tomorrow to let them have another go at the wheel alignment. Otherwise might take it back to Pedders. Cheers
 

glenn l

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Thanks Glen for the response, I really hate getting wheel alignments, due to past experiences with them, 50/50 Had some good wheel alignments (Pedders in Bayswater), but some really poor ones (tires place at Dandenong, and another place) drove the car away and the steering wheel was on a 5 degree lean? Took it back to them to fix.


Seems I might of have another semi poor experience with this one, car is drifting to the left but also I don't think the wheel was centred correctly before the alignment was done as you mentioned above, grrr, as it is off centre to the left a little when driving on a flat straight road. I would have thought a place like Tyreplus was reasonable good at what they did, but it is very hard to get good reviews from the net for decent place to go for new tires and a wheel alignment done correctly the first time. I checked the tire pressure today also to see if that was causing trouble, and they were a little out too, back right 31 psi back left 37 psi, front right 34 psi, front left 33 psi, seems a little poor on the tire place for inconstant tire pressures. Will be back tomorrow to let them have another go at the wheel alignment. Otherwise might take it back to Pedders. Cheers

most tyre places (i say most, not all of them) only do a toe and go, if it takes them 10-15 mins they are not aligning it just a toe and go. it will not fix it if it pulling.
i recomend going to a wheel alignment specialist, might pay more but you get what you pay for.
 

VTowner025

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Been doing some research I think I understand what is going on with the no drifting to the left and right before and after, good for someone new like me and other newbies.

Rung up a Holden dealership and they said that recommended settings for the 3 main settings Camber, Caster and Toe is as follows:

Camber: -0.3 to -0.6 degrees (Confirmed this with Wikipedia as a bit of negative chamber helps to align the wheel straight around corners due to shear forces, but to much will scurf the tires)
Caster: 6.3 to 9.3 degrees
Toe: -2.9 degrees max (Wikipedia says, negative toe push the wheels in, make it travel in a straight line.

Before the wheel alignment

I had the following measurements:

Camber
Left: +0.02
Right: -0.37

Caster
Left: 9.29
Right: 8.30

Toe
Left: +4
Right: -1.1

So the old settings had front left tire pointing 4 mm right (due to positive reading) and also the front right tire pointing 1.1 mm right (due to negative reading) so both tires use to point right, hence when sitting on a chamber road to the left, they cancel each other out and the car drives straight, now that the car has the following settings -1.1 for both the front right and left tire, there is no longer no bias to the right and the car will drift to the left on a camber inclined road. Any car experts please let me know if I am wrong? although I still dont think they aligned up the steering wheel correctly before the wheel alignment, but that is another problem I think.
 
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johnno010684

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whats the difference between toe and caster? i know camber stands the tyre up vertical and if you have an adjustable caster kit on the front you can adjust toe to pointing in or out.
 

Brett_jjj

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whats the difference between toe and caster? i know camber stands the tyre up vertical and if you have an adjustable caster kit on the front you can adjust toe to pointing in or out.

Caster angle is how far back or forward the wheel sits from the front axles centreline ..
 

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