Wheel Alignment

Took the car in for alignment. Dealer cant get the wheel straight and the rears are off by a little. Car has 87+k on the clock and i live in Ohio. I know our cars rust so is there anything i can do to make it easier for the dealer or is the dealer just jerking around?

Are your tires wearing evenly ?

 

If so don't touch the alignment. I'm at 129,000 miles and have never had mine aligned. I have hit 2 pot holes hard enough to pop the hood open.

 

Don't worry about where the steering wheel is all 3 of my Legacy's since 98, have never had a steering wheel that always run straight. It all depends on the pavement. Mine will change from being to the left or right on the highway going to work everyday. There's even one short stretch where the wheel is straight on that drive.

 

Worry about tire wear...nothing else.

Thanks max capacity. The only reason I had alignments done was because of suspension modifications. So far the tires seem to be wearing evenly. I will double check tomorrow and let you know what I find.

Read up on alignment and learn how to do it yourself. Seriously.

 

Once you know what to measure, how to measure it, and how to set your car up for said measuring, the rest is just wrench work and moving things a little in order to make the adjustments. Having patience/not being in a hurry helps.

 

 

There is no excuse for not having a centered steering wheel when driving on flat pavement. Steering wheel centering is part of the toe adjustment procedure, although it can be done last (and even separately). But if the tech simply got total toe in the green (acceptably close to correct) without paying attention to anything else an uncentered wheel can easily be the result.

 

Pavement that is sharply crowned or slopes down toward the left will cause you to have to steer some, one way or the other. No matter what the alignment settings are.

 

What you want for settings with a modified suspension may differ from OE preferred settings. Your driving may work better with something other than OE preferred.

 

Generally, you want the front cambers to be equal (and probably slightly 'negative'; how much negative depends on your driving as much as anything).

 

Caster equal side to side, though it's OK for the RF to be slightly more positive than the LF to help keep the car from drifting toward the edge of crowned pavement. I don't know if yours is adjustable via factory methods.

 

Rear cambers should be equal.

 

 

Norm

So after they aligned my car two weeks ago some how the bolts seized between then and now. Took the car in yesterday so they could try and straighten the wheel out. They looked at it for an hour and came back to tell me the bolts were seized and that i would need new tie rod ends.

Sounds like either the shop two weeks ago didn't really do the job because the bolts were frozen for them as well . . . or they cross-threaded one of them on the re-install and didn't have the steering wheel centered when it happened.

 

 

Norm

i know they adjusted it the first time because when i took it in then the wheel was to the right. when i got it back two weeks ago it was to the left. so they over corrected and now they magically cant work on it because they are seized.