wheel allignment

[Lewy2001]

Originally Posted by rossii

Is that for Aussie specs?

Yes applied to Aussie WK2 MY14. Apparently some vehicles arrived with LHD wheel alignment setup.

[drover]

Originally Posted by Lewy2001

Yes applied to Aussie WK2 MY14. Apparently some vehicles arrived with LHD wheel alignment setup.

Surely one would have had a wheel alignment by now...........
4 wheel align and with air suspension make sure they know how to do it and the electric steering needs to be be set right as well....

Tyre shops are rubbish, they dial in the generic set up for that vehicle, where as a steering shop will set it up then fine tune to suit that vehicle, tyres, suspension and general wear and tear means the OE settings are just a starting point... Ive watched tyre shops do it, all done in minutes, dial it in and move on......

[rossii]

Originally Posted by drover

Surely one would have had a wheel alignment by now...........
4 wheel align and with air suspension make sure they know how to do it and the electric steering needs to be be set right as well....

Yeah.... twice. But if they kept dialling in LHD specs instead of RHD....

Hence why i'm asking for someone else that'll do the job right.

[drover]

Originally Posted by rossii

Yeah.... twice. But if they kept dialling in LHD specs instead of RHD....

Hence why i'm asking for someone else that'll do the job right.

Mate down Petrie way uses Col Robinson at Kedron, reckons he's a do it once shop, quite a few steering shops north of Brissie, while I have had bad jobs done by tyre shops I don't recall a steering shop ever doing a dud job for me...... I'm a bit OCD with balance, alignment and tread wear, drove my boss crazy with my truck and myself at times.

[Trailfirst]

After being sick of uneven wear, clearly not correct handling and bullshit like off centre steering wheel that the alignment shop / tyre shop says cant be fixed Ive been doing my own wheel alignments for many years - on Commondungs, E series Falcons and then the KL Trailhawk.

Alignment places will carry on about technical stuff like thrust angles etc. which is BS and irrelevant to normal alignment. IF their machines are saying some of the obscure functions like thrust angle etc are out and they can't sort it then that likely means something is bent OR their machine is simply flatout wrong - either faulty or configured / setup wrong. They then need to identify what the problem is and all you need to hear about it is "sorry mate but ur stub axle is bent" etc.

The basics of Caster, Camber and Toe are all that should need to be worried about for proper handling and wear.

Steering wheel centred is as simple as adjusting both tie rods - ie. shorten one and lengthen the other (same amount) as required to end up with the wheel centering properly on the road. Biggest bullshit / headscratch I've seen is alignment shop with the steering wheel clamped centred in the cabin, lots of thread clearly available on both tie rods and they're complaining they have the Left wheel toe set ok but just cant get the Right wheel toe to be correct... Like WTF!?!?!? (clearly buggered or incorrectly setup alignment machine but they're too braindead to realise what's going on). THAT's when I've said gimme my keys...

When I get an alignment nailed, on normal cambered road with gentle left and right bends, the car will almost steer itself - ie. in a left bend the increase in road camber will affect the neutral handling point enough to cause gentle drift to the left and then reducing camber on right bends will make it tend to drift that way - with it all nicely neutral and tracking straight on proper camber straight road - with more effort needed to turn the wheel right than left - ie. just the suggestion of turn to left will go that way, while definite turn to the right is needed for that way. On a FLAT uncambered road that tendency will be the other way... Reading what I've put there, when I speak of "tendency to drift" I gotta say its more that just a suggestion of steering along the road makes the car turn and track appropriately. Roads with bit excessive camber each way will cause the car TO actually steer itself left and right with hands off the wheel tho - which is quite amusing.

A perfect alignment - especially with regard to even wear - can involve tweaking of LH and RH camber (ie. you can well end up with those NOT identical!!) as well as caster on at least the passenger side - and then toe as well being shifted maybe a bit away from the specified value - I often end up with much less negative toe than factory specs. The reason for that I suspect is that the factory does design their specs for uniformity and lowest common denominator type situation as far as quality of mechanics doing the work - ie. less than ideal camber / caster CAN be offset and hidden by emphasising the on centre tracking thru negative toe - which isn't necessary if caster and camber are correct for good balanced handling. The settings for all this stuff can actually ideally need to be different in one town / city / region compared to another - I guess dependent on how the roads were built. The way camber is handled on roundabouts, intersections and generally on roads can vary a surprising amount form one place to another!

AS far as alignment shops carrying on about setting up USA vehicles like jeeps - they're just showing their general ignorance. There shouldn't be anything odd or unworkable involved. One thing they may be missing / not realising is that the caster on passenger side needs to be somewhat more than on the driver side to compensate for normal road camber. In the USA that of course needs to be the other way around - so yeah, if a vehicle ends up here with the caster set up for LH Drive then mechs who don't recognise what's going on are gonna be chasing their tails adjusting everything against that basic wrong setup.

I haven't worked on the WK2 before / yet - but we're getting full set of new tyres hopefully next week - and meantime in the couple of months we've owned it, its become apparent the alignment isn't quite right - so I guess I'm about to learn / discover the ins and outs of it. I may NOT be able to come to grips with the WK2 tho as it's clearly fairly sophisticated design that's a bit next level compared to what I've done before.

[drover]

Hence why I use a Steering Shop, they know what they are doing, tyre shops sometimes can't even manage a wheel balance... while I used to do it on my old G60, Landy and FJ55 just can't be stuffed nowadays.......

[bjm]

Originally Posted by Trailfirst

I ended up doing my own wheel alignments from scratch on our previous ED and EF Falcons and then more recently the KL TH we had before the WK2 we have now. Things that PISS ME OFF about mechs doing alignments are when they yabber on about included angles and scrub radius and thrust angles etc.... - and most of all the old can't get the steering wheel straight without resplining it... (unless someone already had it off and put it back wrong - that's utter and complete BULLSHIT).

All that technical stuff is involved in the DESIGN of the freakin thing - and is IRRELEVANT to normal daily adjustment and function unless there's something bent / buggered - ie. "our machine says the thrust angle is out of tolerance no matter what we do" - well, sadly I'd be thinking bent spidle / stub axle etc. then - not something stupid like it's American so in Aus we'll never be able to successfully set that stuff up...

Setting Caster, Camber and Toe to where they should be is all that's needed for perfect wear and handling unless you do have something badly worn or buggered.

Passenger side caster needs to be a bit more than driver side to compensate for normal road camber (THAT will be OPPOSITE for USA setup vehicles - so how much you wanna bet average alignment mechs here end up simply not realising whats going on with that and doing all sorts of stupid adjustment against that basic wrong setting) - and also the slight difference you can end up needing between left and right camber to get even tyre wear on some vehicles. IE: thru adjusting against VISIBLE WEAR I've discovered that sometimes the final cambers required to result in even wear - altho evening out wear in those cases can end up making the vehicle want to drift off to the left too much or be a bit too keen to go right - until the caster is also tweaked to offset properly - very common sense and easy to understand. Most amazingly that whole setup can need to be different from one region to another! - ie. I guess according to what the dudes were doing who laid the roads in that city / town/ region. There ARE proper figures for caster etc but overall if there's too much ur steering will be going heavy and not enough will be extremely light - set to what you like. Camber is something that is pretty much what you need to get the tyre wear even or to suit ur driving style - simples.

Toe is one that I often in spite of what I've said above DO take to alignment place to have set to absolute zero or tiny bit negative (ie. per the factory spec) - giving a starting point to then tweak if necessary to refine handling. Having said that tho, I have found using tape measure across treads at front and rear of the tyres does give a near enough starting point to work from. Steering wheel centering claims about needing to respline the steering wheel and/or "no more adjustment left" will only be true if something's been put together REALLY wrongly or there's fairly serious distortion or something somewhere. I'd particularly be concerned of you've just had rack or tie rods worked on - ie. have they got the rack fitted properly (spacers needed that they didn't notice etc.) or are new tie rods actually NOT screwed fully / properly onto the rack ends - or are they maybe not actually even the correct parts!). To ACTUALLY centre the steering wheel if nothing's buggered all you need to do is lengthen one tie rod and shorten the other (evenly - ie. same each side - to not change toe) - this will rotate the steering wheel in whichever way the adjustments will shift the wheels. The wheels themselves will always track centred unless something is buggered - so the steering wheel will be positioned relative to that - just match the wheel to where the car is trying to go by tweaking those tie rods. Biggest bullshit / headscratch I've seen is alignment shop with the steering wheel clamped centred in the cabin, lots of thread clearly available on both tie rods and they're complaining they have the Left wheel toe set ok but just cant get the Right wheel toe to be correct... Like WTF!?!?!? (clearly buggered or incorrectly setup alignment machine but they're too braindead to realise what's going on). THAT's when I've said gimme my keys...

When I get my alignment nailed, on normal cambered road with gentle left and right bends, the car will almost steer itself - ie. in a left bend the increase in road camber will affect the neutral handling point enough to cause gentle drift to the left and then reducing camber on right bends will make it tend to drift that way - with it all nicely neutral and tracking straight on proper camber straight road - with more effort needed to turn the wheel right than left - ie. just the suggestion of turn to left will go that way, while definite turn to the right is needed for that way. On a FLAT uncambered road that tendency will be the other way... Reading what I've put there, when I speak of "tendency to drift" I gotta say its more that just a suggestion of steering along the road makes the car turn and track appropriately. Roads with bit excessive camber each way will cause the car TO actually steer itself left and right with hands off the wheel tho - which is quite amusing.

For more performance hard cornering tune then you necessarily need to start sacrificing even tyre wear for improved response and bite - mainly in terms of more negative camber - you see how much of that can be needed for balls out situations like racecars with how much their wheels are splayed out - and increasing toe out to a degree that you wouldn't normally use for more sedate and comfy handling.

I haven't worked on the WK2 before / yet - but we're getting full set of new tyres hopefully next week - and meantime in the couple of months we've owned it, its become apparent the alignment isn't quite right - so I guess I'm about to learn / discover the ins and outs of it. I may NOT be able to come to grips with the WK2 tho as it's clearly fairly sophisticated design that's a bit next level compared to what I've done before.

Well said! Just remember to get the rear done as well.The arguments I have had with wheel aligners re Jeeps suspension is ridiculous