Some friendly wheel alignment advice

[Warren Carr]

Hi all,

I've been reading on these posts a lot about wheel alignment with some people saying to use this make of machine that machine etc etc..

A lot of the printouts that I've seen actually have the wrong car specs on, or the cars have coil overs fitted and then still using standard specs.

Don't get me wrong some machines are easier than others but overall you SHOULD get the same result.

So before someone says this machine is great that machine is good, the facts are they all are great its the person who uses the machine which is really more important.

 

[rum4mo]

Yes I agree completely, same as a clown with a good tool kit does not mean excellent results.

I used my local KwikFit to adjust the toeing after I replaced the steering rods and TREs on my older daughter's previous car, a late 2009 Ibiza, they charged quite a bit more than I expected, but they used an alignment bench to check that adjustment, fair enough, maybe progress, but as I had only asked for the toeing to be corrected, they don't seem to have moved the front wheels side to side in the way that these bench's caster computing needs, so the car came back with the toeing reset, and a full geometry set of readings for the car which indicated that the caster was way out on both sides by the same amount, without suggesting that I get that looked into. I think basically no caster at all.

 

[Warren Carr]

They would have used a Hunter, the steering side to side would measure the change of Camber that will in turn give us a Castor reading.

A lot of machines can bypass this measurement as on most cars Castor is not adjustable, but it should really be checked to see if a wishbone is bent or top mounts are worn or damaged or even the Sub Frame twisted as we in the UK we drive on the correct side of the road, we do like to see very slightly more castor on the Passenger side rather than the drivers. That would create a slight pull to the centre of the road to offset the Camber of the road.

But as long as the Castor readings are equal or there about it should drive fine.

In fact BMW did't list Castor readings up until recently simply because they were just looking for equal readings either side.

But generally more castor = heavier steering less = lighter.

 

[ninjag]

Agree with this, a place I used for tyres have a full Hunter setup which has one of those quick pre-check units. It came back with my rears needing some adjustment, but then I noticed they had my car down as a B9 when it's actually a B8.5. I'm not sure if it will be different, but I'd rather the correct spec entered in the first place.