Went And Got My Tracking Setup Today...

[Alastairh 47]

Hello, just thought id tell you all my findings from my steering tracking setup i had done at my local 4 wheel alignment place today.

 

First off id like to point out im not a suspension genius, i've just bolted shiny stuff together and like to point out those who plan to get there tracking done in future to re consider a proper 4 wheel alignment place, as there can be soo much improvement over the average kwickfit garage and price difference was bugger all!

 

I was in for 2 new tyres and this was my results:

 

*key* top is camber, middle caster and lower is Toe. Centre is total toe and then steer ahead *key*

 

In the last 6 months the car has had:

Rebuilt 309 gti beam, new arb bushes, track rod ends (rack seemed ok), drop links, 309 wish bones and shafts and running bilstein shocks and eagles all round. so a fairly fun car.

 

This result kinda puts a question mark on the 309 wishbones, with the passenger at -2.54d and the drivers at -1.02d

 

But anyway. The car drivers in a perfect straight line, and i've not driven a 205 for a long time thats sat that straight considering i've had it done 5 or so times on 205s.

 

Alastair

[Miles 331 1 Cars]

You need to remember that most 205's vary from chassis to chassis, when I had the 309 arms on a old of of mine I got mixed result's from the same equipment as you had yours done on,

But I see going by the green not much is where it should be

[Powers 13]

Very interesting.

Can i ask how much it cost and where you had it done.

[Rippthrough 98]

Rear beams fubar'd.

[taylorspug 7]

Or a stub pin is bent... Id say it was this considering the camber and toe is way out on one side.

 

Had this on mine the other day, one wheel had 3mm more toe in than the other, swapped it out now and all is good.

[Sandy 189]

I'm not remarking about the people you've been to, but very few garages know how to properly calibrate or use four wheel alignment equipment, if it's not done properly, it's alot less accurate than traditional toe and single wheel camber/castor measurment. Also they cannot cope with a less than perfect chassis as Miles describes, in which case, wheel by wheel and axle by axle measurements are more relevant.

[PumaRacing 1]

Hello, just thought id tell you all my findings from my steering tracking setup i had done at my local 4 wheel alignment place today.

 

Never trust those places. Staffed by idiots and if there's an error in the database or the car isn't in it because of modifications, damage or otherwise you have no way of knowing what you're going to drive out with. Wheels pointing at right angles to each other quite likely. MartinR on here had his 205 set to 13mm toe out by his local "computerised" idiot shop. Scrubbed the tread off the tyres in a single weekend. That was the second attempt btw after he took it back because it was handling so erratically and sliding round corners. It wasn't till he brought it round and I stuck a tape measure between the rims that we found out how bad things were. You could even see it by eye. The wheels were visibly pointing away from each other. The machine said book figure toe in though and the monkey in the boilersuit couldn't do anything other than follow the machine so it came back out the second time just as bad.

 

This "four" wheel alignment stuff is also nonsense. There's nothing on 99% of cars to adjust other than the front toe and the only relation this has to the rear wheels is to get the steering wheel pointing at 12 o'clock.

 

What you need is a bloke with a Dunlop optical gauge who actually knows what he's doing.

 

Finally, ignore the book setting of toe in for a 205. There's not been a fwd car made that wants toe in on the front wheels. That's a rwd car setting. For 205s you want dead parallel, maybe a tiny bit of toe out for track use.

 

Oh, finally finally. before you get any tracking done count the numbers of turns lock to lock each way. If it's not the same both ways then the steering wheel isn't in the right place and the rack isn't centred. I had a Fiesta once which I could turn easily into my drive coming from one direction but kept running out of lock if I came from the other direction. Puzzled me for a while until I checked the lock. There were about 1.5 turns one way and 2 the other. Some pillock had had the steering wheel off and put it back in the wrong place on the splines. They'd then adjusted the tracking by about 20 turns to centre it again. When I got under it the rod ends were hanging off the threads on one side and screwed up against the rack end on the other. Twats.

[philfingers 5]

Agree with others. What is there to adjust on a std car, toe in at the front, that's it (unless you count tyre pressures!). Unless you have adjustable bottom arms or eccentric tops mounts, the only thing it's really telling you is if it's straight and inline, if it's out tho you can't 'adjust it' with a spanner!

[taylorspug 7]

I do mine the old fashioned way with 4 axle stands and some fishing line. Takes a little while to set up but at least you know its right.

[PumaRacing 1]

I do mine the old fashioned way with 4 axle stands and some fishing line. Takes a little while to set up but at least you know its right.

 

Same here basically. I set up a box either side of the car about hub height and as close to the wheels as possible. I lay a straight metal flat bar on each of those and weight them down with bricks. Then I set the bars parallel with a tape measure. Roll the car back between them and measure from the bars to front and rear of the rims on each side. Add the two front and two rear measurements together and you get your toe in or out. Not as quick or accurate as a proper gauge but you can work to a mm or so and that's plenty good enough. The tolerance on tracking is usually +/- 2mm which is quite a lot really.

 

Even if you don't want to crawl under and adjust anything yourself it's a quick way of checking if there's something obviously wrong when the car stops handling properly or if you've hit a kerb or a pothole.

[Ahl 4]

Just curious, I take it these DIY methods still involve rolling the car back and forth between each adjustment and check?

 

I've got some old manual Dunlop gauges that work well, but it still takes a long time and is a pain in the arse resettling the car between adjustments.

[Higgy 0]

This "four" wheel alignment stuff is also nonsense. There's nothing on 99% of cars to adjust other than the front toe and the only relation this has to the rear wheels is to get the steering wheel pointing at 12 o'clock.

 

Exactly. Soooooo true.

 

I'd rather not know my rear wheels are out of alignment. What are you going to do? jig the shell? drill out the rear beam mounting bolt holes in order to give adjustment? - as said in the 'MATRIX' "ignorance is bliss"

 

My mate with a Mark 1 MR2, said that they have all sorts of geometry adjustment. Thats your 1%.

With all that adjustment there is plenty of scope for fcuking up the handling, making it very dangerous. Not something manufacturers want (apart from the LOO 205 )

 

Higgy.

 

(hoping his toe is somewhere near 0mm )

[PumaRacing 1]

Just curious, I take these DIY methods still involve rolling the car back and forth between each adjustment and check?

 

Sometimes you can get at the rod ends easily without moving the car away from the boxes. Depends on the design. It helps to take the wheels off first, get the lock nuts loose if they're rusted solid and oil everything and then you can reach under with a spanner once the wheels are back on. Mind you it's years since I've had to mess about with tracking myself or in fact do just about any car servicing. The Focus doesn't do enough miles to alter anything and a mate has a Dunlop gauge and a car hoist if I need any work done. In three years the sum total of my car related DIY is I've put a set of front brake pads on it, charged the battery once and changed the plugs a year ago.

 

The days of spending every weekend crawling under some highly modified and temperamental beast to try and keep it running right are long over. As long as what I drive starts and runs every time I need it that'll do me just fine.

[Alastairh 47]

In defence to the place i went to, as soon as i drove in he said i can only adjust the 2 things on the front and thats it, simply because thats all you can do. If it was a Honda prelude then a different matter. which i agreed know how 205s bolt together.

 

Its a very accurate setup and drives really well.

[Owain1602 0]

I run a German/Sweedish specialist workshop, that 1% becomes more like 95% for these cars. I agree with your views on most local tyre places that do wheel alignment not being very good.

We get sub-contracted work from some local dealerships that dont know how to use 4 wheel alignment gear. A lot of manufacturer wheel alignment specs are way out, especially on rear wheels. New vauxhalls are awful for wearing rear tyres on inside, more and more of this type of car have rear adjustment for toe and camber now though. Its becoming more common so more mistakes are going to be made by tyre places that can't even grasp Front toe.

[PumaRacing 1]

I run a German/Sweedish specialist workshop, that 1% becomes more like 95% for these cars. I agree with your views on most local tyre places that do wheel alignment not being very good.

We get sub-contracted work from some local dealerships that dont know how to use 4 wheel alignment gear. A lot of manufacturer wheel alignment specs are way out, especially on rear wheels. New vauxhalls are awful for wearing rear tyres on inside, more and more of this type of car have rear adjustment for toe and camber now though. Its becoming more common so more mistakes are going to be made by tyre places that can't even grasp Front toe.

 

Just out of curiosity you might be able to shed some light on my story above. I've often wondered how they managed to set Martin's car up, twice, at 13mm toe out when the printout said 2mm toe in. A basic calibration error in that particular machine resulting in every car that came in for work going out wrong? A specific error that only affected 205s? The bloke using it doing something stupid each time?

 

You'd have to think that anyone, no matter how braindead, would eventually twig that if every car that came in was apparently 15mm out of adjustment to start with maybe, just maybe, it was his machine that was wrong.

[Owain1602 0]

I dont use the posh lazer/optical machine that has all the specs and does all the measurements for you, i dont really like it. I use some other ones we have, it also does 4 wheel alignment but not in the same way, you have more interaction with the actual car.

It deffinetely isnt a problem only with 205s, im sure some damage or mistake has occured to the machine previously. It would have to be fairly serious for the machine to go out of calibration by that much really but it would have to be a huge error by the user to be that far out. You would have to wonder how he's managed to get to work in the morning really being that stupid.

I would recon its being used wrongly because you'd have to run over the machine for it to be that far out. But as you say you should notice it straight away by looking at it and certainly after a road test.

They cetrainly dont do any good to the rep of garages.