How to straighten out your steering wheel via tie rods

So I get a lot of these "centering the steering wheel" questions, so I just did a simple explanation of how it's done.. remember, it's how accurate you can make it, so I cant garantee how well your alignment will be after you are done.. there are many other ways to do it, but this is the common fix I use on all my cars.

 

Hi Keefe,

I was reading thru some old posts about the steering wheel off center fix. You mentioned that you had a guide to doing your own alignment. Could you send it to me if you still have it?

Thanks

 

 

it's really adjusting the toe of the front end.. You will need two pieces of the straightest 2x4s of the same length that you can get and something to square them up to the tires. I normally make an L shape with the 2x4s so that the lower portion of the L is actually lined up on the back of the tire.. the upright portion of the L is laid flat on the level ground along the outside edge of the tire, so it would look something like this:

 

(front of car)

|[]-------[]|

-- ..........--

 

the green is your tie-rod/steering rack

the red is your 2x4s that you built so that they are your right angles

you can ignore those "....." (I couldnt space it out so that the diagram would look correct).

 

Most of the time, I just tell people that this is the easy fix and to run zero toe up front. If you want to do some your own custom toe alignment, then you need to do some more math and use geometry and trig to figure out what you need (not that hard either if you made your 2x4s long enough to work with common trig numbers).

 

But to have zero toe AND center your steering wheel, you would do the following:

 

if you steering wheel is facing to the left and the car is going straight:

You need to shorten the right tie rod and lengthen the left tie rod.

 

if you steering wheel is facing to the right and the car is going straight:

You need to shorten the left tie rod and lengthen the right tie rod.

 

"so how do I know how much to lengthen or shorten on each end?"

you just move them at equal distance to retain the same toe.. now, if you royal screwed up the measurements, no big deal, that's why you have those L brackets. You slowly adjust the tie rods until you get what you need to make the steering wheel straight, it may take you a couple of times, but you will get it right.. normally it takes me about 3 to 5 tries to get it right because every car is different with the number of turns for the tie rods to make it move X amount of degrees to make the steering wheel go straight.

 

If you want get zero toe and not have any tire wear, you want to measure (tape measurer is fine) the front end of the L bracket from left to right(called measurement "A") and the rear end of the L bracket (called measurement "B"). It should be something like this:

 

|<------A------->|

|[] []|

|<------B------->|

 

if "A" > "B" = it means you have toe out, the greater the difference, the more toe you have out

 

if "A" < "B" = it means you have toe in, the greater the difference, the more toe you have in

 

if "A" = "B" = congratulations, you have zero toe.

 

just keep adjusting the tie rods until you get the measurements correct. Once you have the steering wheel centered, adjusting toe will be easy because you are either adding length or shortening BOTH rods to retain the straightness of the steering wheel.

 

 

"Is this all accurate?"

It's only as accurate as you make it. I am only giving you the essence of it. You can find a billion ways to really do an alignment on your own car (google has a lot to offer from race cars and what race teams do and they are just as accurate down to 0.001" precision, our race team gets it down to the 0.01 precision for a lot of our setups). I dont even bother going to the alignment rack and use a hunter machine anymore because I just saved so much money from going there and I make my own tools at home (from camber readers, toe and caster readers, and my race team all chipped in and got corner scales for the car for corner balancing).

 

 

Hope that helps.

Any chance you can explain how to adjust camber to zero? I think I've screwed it up when changing springs, but am oblivious as to how that bolt actually works...

i am ignorant..in doing this, other than making my alignment worse..is there any harm that can be done?

 

If my wheel is centered (steering wheel is centered and i drive straight) does this mean all has been done correctly, or is it possible to have my steering wheel straight and something else messed up?

 

My wheel got messed up after an accident a year and a half ago and i never bothered to take it back and bitch about it being off center and would love for it to be fixed.

Any chance you can explain how to adjust camber to zero? I think I've screwed it up when changing springs, but am oblivious as to how that bolt actually works...

 

there's no real way without having a level ground and a digital leveler tool to do that.

i am ignorant..in doing this, other than making my alignment worse..is there any harm that can be done?

 

If my wheel is centered (steering wheel is centered and i drive straight) does this mean all has been done correctly, or is it possible to have my steering wheel straight and something else messed up?

 

My wheel got messed up after an accident a year and a half ago and i never bothered to take it back and bitch about it being off center and would love for it to be fixed.

 

 

if you drive around with some really whacky toe in or toe out, you'll know. Your car can literally be screeching tires as you drive straight down the road, it's scrubbing.

 

you can have your steering wheel be straight, the car tracks straight, but you can have toe in or out as well (usually toe in for the front will make the car more stable, so it will want to track straight).

Any chance you can explain how to adjust camber to zero? I think I've screwed it up when changing springs, but am oblivious as to how that bolt actually works...

 

Hi, Most High-end performance shops will have a camber gauge for sale or will be able to order one, this will mount on the tire and give you a fairly accurate reading as to what your camber is at.

 

Now to correct the camber if out of spec, jack up the vehicle, remove the tire, now the top mounting bold that mounts the strut to the steering knuckle is the one that you want to modify, (now this is not by any means the proper way to do it, its just a quick fix) remove that top one and loosen the bottom one, now with a die grinder and good burr, remove some material from the strut mounting surface as to allow the upper bolt to move in or out to add or remove camber. Another way is to install a smaller bolt to allow the amount of movement, just make sure if you go that way to get one of equal or greater strength .

 

Hope this helps