Well... I have the Goodyear UltraGrip 8 Winter tyres fitted to our GV and thought I'd better get the tracking done! As the summer tyres were badly worn on the outside edges.The guy did it 3 times! And still couldn't get it to track up correctly. He said it should be +1 (Not sure what that means). When you have the steering wheel dead straight the car will wander off to the right! The on another straight road the steering wheel has to be turned slightly to the right to keep the car in a straight line. The track rod ends have very little play in them! And the inner steering rods are also good as changed about 6 months ago.

The mechanic isn't happy with the results and has asked me to take it back to him in a couple of days to check again. Does anyone know what could cause this? And what the tracking figures are? I really want to get good use out of these winter shoes.

 

Could be your stabilisation bars and/or the rubbers of the front sway bar, I changed mine and I lost the "clunck clunck" sound on rough roads and the car steers 250% better and straigther.

 

Hi...

Did you change these to Poly or just the normal rubber ones? Is the stabilisation bar the torsion bar?

 

The only thing that's going to affect your tracking is your steering gear including end ball joints and control arms. Struts form arc/turning movement only. Stabilizer bar tries to keep control arms uniform. So if your control arm joints are good its your steering gear end ball joints. Thinking here your needing to try another garage before he asks for Blood samples in jars.

 

Okay... So inner steering rods okay! Track rod end (Drivers side) has little play in it! He checked near side and said that was okay. confued

Is anyone else having tyre wear issues on outside edges?

 

Dunno the rubbers where black
My GV steers a LOT better/straight since I changed the stabilisation bars, but I indeed don't know if it can influence the tracking tho...

 

Note that the issue of little play multiplies as arm gets longer. If you know what I mean...I'd get it replaced.

 

I'd like to add that play in one of the track rod ends, means that the wheels are going to go into Toe in configuration much more Under Load. And not so much under test.

 

One of the first things I used to do with mysterious steering problems was to have someone else drive the vehicle while I followed in another. Sometimes in the suspect vehicle, the rear wheels weren't following the front wheels precisely, i.e. slightly to one side, or "crabbing". Driving the suspect vehicle yourself, you can't notice crabbing.
I've not seen vehicles crabbing lately, but it was quite common years ago.

Crabbing can be caused by a previous shunt/accident in which case the chassis isn't quite straight. I had a long straight plank which I placed against the front and back wheels after adjusting the steering wheel for best dead-ahead travel. If the steering wheel wasn't in the dead-ahead mid position, then something was wrong with either the wheel alignment, steering joints, or chassis straighness. Sometimes the vehicle had been bashed against a kerb by someone else driving it (and saying nothing) resulting in slightly bent parts around the steering.

Another trick to establish straightness of chassis is to measure the two diagonal distances between front and back wheels with a tape measure: They should of course be identical, down to a millimetre or so. (There are odd vehicles where this doesn't apply, like the old Renault Dauphin)

One thing I learned in those days was about cheap far-eastern tyres I tried -- they always seemed to want to roll down the camber of the road (to the left in UK). Substituting good quality american, british or continental tyres fixed it immediate.

Leedsman.

 

Cheers guys for all your info I will be taking a good look at the car over the weekend now. Funny how you say about uneven wear on the rear tyres if you have been involved in a rear ender! My last car was a Toyota Avensis T180 2.2L Diesel estate that had uneven rear tyre wear. Bought that 2nd hand and had to have 2 new engines fitted due to HG fail. All because of carbon build up that in turn caused gasket shuffle and the engine was toast! As the block warped. Thank goodness for Toyota's goodwill 112k or 7 year extended warranty. This would gave cost 13k other wise.

Couldn't stand the worry about a 3rd one going outside the warranty! So got rid and bought an old skool Celica gt4 205 import. Lush to have a 4 wheel drive sports car for Dad