Alignment/Tracking Advice

[Lee540]

Car - 2011 Volkswagen Golf 1.4TSi 122

Steering wheel was always at about 1 o’clock off straight but the car appeared to track properly, i.e take hands off wheel and car continues straight.

Today I decided I want steering wheel straightened.. took to local indy for tracking, £30 later, the steering wheel is now 12 o’clock for straight ahead but if I let go of the wheel the car pulls violently left at speeds above 30mph.

Any ideas what has happened? I obviously don’t want this and wish I just left it as it was. I called the garage back and have print out of toe left/right of 0.00 and 0.00.

Cheers,

[227bhp]

Tell your Mum n Dad and the neighbours and everyone on Facebook.
Then just take it back to whoever did it and tell them to fix it.

[Lee540]

227bhp said:

Tell your Mum n Dad and the neighbours and everyone on Facebook.
Then just take it back to whoever did it and tell them to fix it.

Thanks for the valued response.

[E-bmw]

Lee540 said:

Any ideas what has happened?

They have fooked it up, take it back.

[227bhp]

Lee540 said:

227bhp said:

Tell your Mum n Dad and the neighbours and everyone on Facebook.
Then just take it back to whoever did it and tell them to fix it.

Thanks for the valued response.

That's ok, i'll be round to wipe your arse for you later. Whilst i'm there do you want me to ring them for you to tell them they messed it up and book it in for re-doing?

[Lee540]

I want to know what they fked up. If machine is showing aligned. I will take it somewhere else.

I didn’t realise this was fking Mumsnet now.. if you don’t know anything about cars then why bother replying.

[E-bmw]

Lee540 said:

I want to know what they fked up.

How the hell is anyone supposed to know without seeing what they are looking at?

It didn't do it beforehand, they did stuff, it does now, take it back simples!

[GreenV8S]

The should have just centered the steering wheel and adjusted the track rods to correct the steering alignment. That wouldn't cause the steering to pull. You said the rest of the geometry is within spec. In that case they won't be able to fix the problem by geometry changes.

If it's electric power steering, it could pull either because the rack is damaged, or the zero position has been set incorrectly. Given that they recentered the steering, that seems quite likely that the zero position is now wrong. I've never adjusted that myself but I understand that on Citroens it's often set by an adjustable potentiometer on the rack, so perhaps yours is similar. You may need to remove a cover plate to access it.

Other things that could make it pull: unequal tyre pressures, top strut bearing failure, broken suspension spring. No reason to expect any of these happened just when they made their change, but worth a quick check anyway if you can't find any other cause.

[stevieturbo]

The biggest cause of issues with alignment.....is incompetence of the person doing the job.

And often after this, they will then try and say you need to buy something from them to correct it, whether it be tyres, or a different alignment setup or something.

Find somewhere competent. But as you've given nobody here any actual info to go on ( like details of alignment settings before and after, details of what was adjusted, and whether there was any history of problems before...ie why was your steering wheel not straight in the first place ? )....what answers did you expect ?

[Jakg]

stevieturbo said:

The biggest cause of issues with alignment.....is incompetence of the person doing the job.

This, 99%.