Audi A4 pulling to the left and steering wheel not straight!
Discussion
Start with getting a garage to even the toe front and rear.
Your front toe in is asymmetric, which pulls the steering wheel in the direction of the larger toe value, to the left in you case.
Your rear toe is also asymmetric, and that points the whole car in the direction of the high toe in wheel...so to the right...which means you have to steer left to compensate.
Make sure the car is fully tanked before you go...but otherwise empty (no dead bodies in the boot)
The angles are only small, but they matter, especially with stiff tyres. Other than that it looks pretty good.
Get back to us when you have 10’ of toe on each wheel. Only then car we move on.
Personally, I can’t wait.
Kawasicki said:
Start with getting a garage to even the toe front and rear.
Your front toe in is asymmetric, which pulls the steering wheel in the direction of the larger toe value, to the left in you case.
Your rear toe is also asymmetric, and that points the whole car in the direction of the high toe in wheel...so to the right...which means you have to steer left to compensate.
Make sure the car is fully tanked before you go...but otherwise empty (no dead bodies in the boot)
The angles are only small, but they matter, especially with stiff tyres. Other than that it looks pretty good.
Get back to us when you have 10’ of toe on each wheel. Only then car we move on.
Personally, I can’t wait.
Kawasicki said:
Start with getting a garage to even the toe front and rear.
The difference from side to side is roughly four minutes, so it would take an adjustment of two minutes to get them perfect. Do you really feel that two minutes of toe adjustment is going to make any difference to anything?For comparison, a steering input of a couple of inches on the rim of a 14" steering wheel typically produces a steering deflection of the order of a couple of degrees (i.e. 120 minutes) at the hub.
GreenV8S said:
Kawasicki said:
Start with getting a garage to even the toe front and rear.
The difference from side to side is roughly four minutes, so it would take an adjustment of two minutes to get them perfect. Do you really feel that two minutes of toe adjustment is going to make any difference to anything?For comparison, a steering input of a couple of inches on the rim of a 14" steering wheel typically produces a steering deflection of the order of a couple of degrees (i.e. 120 minutes) at the hub.
The OP mentions he took the steering wheel off...maybe the steering wheel angle is out of whack...and the EPAS pull compensation is causing issues.
It is hard to believe the steering system and suspension could be worn enough to cause pull. The car is pretty new.
Nothing to lose in checking apart from time and money, but it doesn't seem very promising to me. Given the geometry looks so close to spot on, I'd be checking the cross weighting next. If the two front wheels have significantly different weights, that could cause different amounts of drag which will show up as a steering bias. Offsetting the tyre pressures as somebody else suggested would be one way to compensate for that.
I had a problem on a customers T5. Bloody thing would keep pulling left, but 2 * Hawkeye alignment was fine.
I had just changed the front suspension - shocks, springs, ball joints and drop links. I looked at it twice, and could not find a fitting error. Eventually I stripped it all back down.
In my case there was a poor fit between the hub and shock absorber, and the bolts could be tightened with the hub in different positions. I slackened the bolts, and moved them in completely the opposite direction, and retightened the bolts. Since then all good.
Not saying this is your issue, and I was completely gob smacked to see this making a difference. But it did.
I had just changed the front suspension - shocks, springs, ball joints and drop links. I looked at it twice, and could not find a fitting error. Eventually I stripped it all back down.
In my case there was a poor fit between the hub and shock absorber, and the bolts could be tightened with the hub in different positions. I slackened the bolts, and moved them in completely the opposite direction, and retightened the bolts. Since then all good.
Not saying this is your issue, and I was completely gob smacked to see this making a difference. But it did.
GreenV8S said:
Nothing to lose in checking apart from time and money, but it doesn't seem very promising to me. Given the geometry looks so close to spot on, I'd be checking the cross weighting next. If the two front wheels have significantly different weights, that could cause different amounts of drag which will show up as a steering bias. Offsetting the tyre pressures as somebody else suggested would be one way to compensate for that.
I like your theory on corner weights.GreenV8S said:
Do you reckon the damper was applying a torque to the hub? I'm struggling to see how else that could pull on the steering without affecting the geometry.
I really don't know. I have a funny head, and I think about this kind of rubbish and try and understand things. But I don't understand this.The hub / shock design is a little different to the norm. The hub essentially has a plate with holes in it pointing vertically up. The bolts fit in horizontally front to back (in the direction of the car). The shock has plates either side of the hub, and therefore play in the holes allows a slightly different hub position. But I don't understand how it is that it was being forced left. Perhaps it was a slightly different rolling position on the tyre? Dunno I'm afraid.
Thanks for the replies everyone, I just wanted other people thoughts on what the issue could be my boss said he will look at it Monday seen as tho he’s been a mechanic all his life and currently looks after 107 fleet vehicles I’m sure he’ll have a good idea I just wanted other people’s thoughts also I’ll update use on Monday if anybody wants to know
Plenty of bad advice in here. Your suspension geometry is near as dammit perfect if the machine is to be believed. Buggering about with a couple of minutes of discrepancy here and there will achieve nothing.
Here is what you need to do. Turn the steering wheel full lock one way. Make a mark on the wheel. Turn it full lock the other way. Make another mark. Find the exact half way point. Remove the steering wheel and refit it so it's in the 12 o'clock position at the half way point of the travel. Then get the tracking reset to achieve even toe with the steering wheel in the right place. That will ensure the steering rack is also in the centre point of its travel when you are driving straight ahead. See if that helps.
Here is what you need to do. Turn the steering wheel full lock one way. Make a mark on the wheel. Turn it full lock the other way. Make another mark. Find the exact half way point. Remove the steering wheel and refit it so it's in the 12 o'clock position at the half way point of the travel. Then get the tracking reset to achieve even toe with the steering wheel in the right place. That will ensure the steering rack is also in the centre point of its travel when you are driving straight ahead. See if that helps.
Mignon said:
Plenty of bad advice in here. Your suspension geometry is near as dammit perfect if the machine is to be believed. Buggering about with a couple of minutes of discrepancy here and there will achieve nothing.
Here is what you need to do. Turn the steering wheel full lock one way. Make a mark on the wheel. Turn it full lock the other way. Make another mark. Find the exact half way point. Remove the steering wheel and refit it so it's in the 12 o'clock position at the half way point of the travel. Then get the tracking reset to achieve even toe with the steering wheel in the right place. That will ensure the steering rack is also in the centre point of its travel when you are driving straight ahead. See if that helps.
Why would that help?Here is what you need to do. Turn the steering wheel full lock one way. Make a mark on the wheel. Turn it full lock the other way. Make another mark. Find the exact half way point. Remove the steering wheel and refit it so it's in the 12 o'clock position at the half way point of the travel. Then get the tracking reset to achieve even toe with the steering wheel in the right place. That will ensure the steering rack is also in the centre point of its travel when you are driving straight ahead. See if that helps.
It could have been in a light accident in the past and something is bent slightly or misaligned, let's face it, it only takes someone to skid on ice or snow and bounce off a kerb for that to happen. The steering wheel being off centre points in this direction....
There is something called 'set back' and it's not when your wife leaves you in this context, It's the measurement between the front and rear wheels. It can be used to counteract the pull of the camber of the road so some manufacturers set their cars up using it dependent on which side of the road the car will be used on. I can see on the charts it hasn't been noted or even measured and is where I would be looking as it only needs a tape measure and two people. Oh and the manufacturers spec, that would be the hardest part, getting that....
There is something called 'set back' and it's not when your wife leaves you in this context, It's the measurement between the front and rear wheels. It can be used to counteract the pull of the camber of the road so some manufacturers set their cars up using it dependent on which side of the road the car will be used on. I can see on the charts it hasn't been noted or even measured and is where I would be looking as it only needs a tape measure and two people. Oh and the manufacturers spec, that would be the hardest part, getting that....
Kawasicki said:
Why would that help?
It's the starting point for getting any car tracked properly. If the rack is not centralised then the track rod ends will be differently adjusted and the steering travel won't be the same in both directions. I once had a Fiesta that always struck me as harder to get into my driveway if I came down my road from one direction than the other. It took me ages to twig the issue but it had much more steering lock on one side. Like 2 turns one way and 1.5 the other. The Fiestas have hexagonal steering columns not splined and the steering wheel was one flat out of position. The track rod ends were so far out that one side was screwed into the rack as far as it would go and the other side was almost hanging off.I'm not saying this will be causing the OP's car to pull but if he's been messing with the steering wheel position then this needs to be fixed. It can also upset self cancelling indicators and electronic stability control.
To the OP. Tracking issues at the front end don't generally cause pulling just to one side. No matter where the wheels point they will find their central balanced position when the car is going straight ahead just by equalisation of forces acting on them. They might well scrub and wear out but not pull. Rear wheels out of whack will certainly require some steering wheel adjustment as they will drive the rear of the car one way or the other but yours appear to be spot on from the printout. A few minutes of arc difference from side to side is nothing.
As suggested measure the wheel base front to rear on each side but I think the caster would be different if this was out and the printout says it's fine but it's a quick and easy check to do.
I'm not a fan of those computerised tracking machines. I've seen them do some weird things like a friend's Peugeot 205 that came back with half an inch of toe out on the front wheels which scrubbed a set of tyres out in a single motorway journey. You can't beat an old skool Dunlop tracking gauge for simple front wheel alignment.
Kawasicki said:
Mignon said:
Plenty of bad advice in here. Your suspension geometry is near as dammit perfect if the machine is to be believed. Buggering about with a couple of minutes of discrepancy here and there will achieve nothing.
Here is what you need to do. Turn the steering wheel full lock one way. Make a mark on the wheel. Turn it full lock the other way. Make another mark. Find the exact half way point. Remove the steering wheel and refit it so it's in the 12 o'clock position at the half way point of the travel. Then get the tracking reset to achieve even toe with the steering wheel in the right place. That will ensure the steering rack is also in the centre point of its travel when you are driving straight ahead. See if that helps.
Why would that help?Here is what you need to do. Turn the steering wheel full lock one way. Make a mark on the wheel. Turn it full lock the other way. Make another mark. Find the exact half way point. Remove the steering wheel and refit it so it's in the 12 o'clock position at the half way point of the travel. Then get the tracking reset to achieve even toe with the steering wheel in the right place. That will ensure the steering rack is also in the centre point of its travel when you are driving straight ahead. See if that helps.
Mignon said:
vsonix said:
Yes, if that's all you need, but if you've just done new springs and shocks and extensive rebushing then you can't just do the front and forget the rest.
Why? What about any of that affects the front toe settings?I thought you meant in general not in reference to the OP lol
Laser tracking is mainly for speed, it doesn't do the job much better than a piece of string, a camber/castor gauge and other bits shown below, but a large % of the people using them don't know what they're doing, that's the problem.
Took me hours the first time I did it, but it was spot on.
Took me hours the first time I did it, but it was spot on.
Evoluzione said:
Laser tracking is mainly for speed, it doesn't do the job much better than a piece of string, a camber/castor gauge and other bits shown below, but a large % of the people using them don't know what they're doing, that's the problem.
Took me hours the first time I did it, but it was spot on.
I think the computerised machines get confused if the front and rear track widths are not the same like on a Pug 205. The rear is narrower and they try to get the fronts pointing at the rears which gives a huge toe out.Took me hours the first time I did it, but it was spot on.
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