Wheel alignment!!!!!

[v5r]

tdi sport 130 has pulled to the left since new and now worn the inner edges of the front tyres badly. Had 4 wheel alignment carried out about 6mths ago and has made no difference. The place I used said there was no adjustment for caster/camber...
read some threads that you can loosen the sub frame and adjust that way, tried it today and you can get alot of movement... Can anyone recommend some where in or around aberdeen to get this sorted, need somewhere with 4 wheel alignment equipment and the skill to sort it out once and for all...........

is there any way to measure these angles diy????

 

[goble]

you loosen the strut on the bottom two bolts for the camber.
you need specialist equipment to check camber/caster

 

[v5r]

anywhere recommended for laser whel alignment in aberdeen

 

[rashcupra]

all eezer pull left mate its a charactaristic they have so get used to holding yourright hand tight downwards!

ive managed to alighn cars in where i work by as you say loosening strut subframe lower arm bolts and a leaver bar!

 

[pg glasgow]

cant recomend anywere in aberdeen sorry.
i would say avoid kwik-fit,and hi-q if you have had your car lowerd. a couple of times in the past they have refused to look at some of my cars and the one time hi-q did they made it worse then when i went back they said because my car had been lowerd they were not properly equiped to deal with it.

now when i need wheel alignments or that i go to drivers in glasgow they sell and fit all the good stuff.they also have the correct equipment for dealing with modified and performance cars.
im sure there will be similar outfits in or around aberdeen,or you could travel a couple of hundred miles south!!

 

[v5r]

the slight pull to the left I could live with but not the shredding of tyres every 10000miles. the car is standard and I am sure it could be sorted. used sca in norwich once and they are ace. just looking for somewhere closer to home, will drive to glasgow if I know it would be sorted

cheers all for your replies

 

[dozza.13]

If you do a search on 'tyre wear' you will see this is a common problem mate, there appear to be several solutions, but dealers are particularly unhelpful! Its because the front wheels are set up toe'd out too much, meaning the inner edges wear more quickly, how crap is that???!!! I have the same problem on my cupra!!

 

[muddyboots]

Not only is the toe setting wrong, but the crap wishbone bushes allow too much wishbone movement under acceleration/braking which causes the alignment to change.

If it's a TDI 130 Sport, then it must be 2 or 3 years old at least, I'd recommend getting the bushes replaced first for the Cupra versions (which are solid instead of having gaping voids in). Otherwise you're wasting your money on getting the alignment sorted out.

 

[Guinness]

mines pulls to the left, I just got used 2 it, let go of the wheel go round the cornor lol

 

[Poverty]

arent all cars meant to pull slightly to the left as a safety feature for drivers asleep at the wheel!?

 

[Guinness]

lol first iv heard.

 

[Nath.]

even if your car is set up perfectly square and true it will pull to the left with the camber of the road

middle lane of a straight motorway is probably the only place it will go straight

 

[ubiquitous]

I'll post some pics of what happened to my offside front. I had it checked 3 months ago and there was approximately 4 mm of tread left. Went out to my car yesterday to find the tyre flat, when I changed it the entire inside quarter had worn down to the webbing!

 

[bozzy-07FR]

hey i got an 07 ibiza FR and it also pulls left francis in leicester are oparticually unhelpful and am not happy if its gonna shed me tyres as there pretty bloody pricey are there any slutions to this problem? people say its road camber but it pulls way to much to be the camber! drove my friends fr and he said it could be something to do with pullies on the steering but i dont know a lot about it also me steering wheel is slightly out of line but not had a bump or anything.
any recomendations would be great!
taaa!

 

[ANdy947]

anywhere recommended for laser whel alignment in aberdeen

Speccy cars would probably be the best bet, they do have Seat delership now, though i think they will be £130+vat.

Hawco peterhead might be able to do it, aswell as the Skoda garage in Maud, both of which will be cheaper but you'd have to travel to.

If you want it dont right, i'd suggest one of those places, as looking at the techinical workshop maual, there are special tools for jigging the subframe to get the alignment spot on.

 

[mgrays]

Overton Garage (not the car breakers lot but up North a bit) are the best recomended 4 wheel aligners in Aberdeen area at the moment I think. 4 years ago I was trying to get it done (non Seat) and even those companies that had the equipment could not actually use it correctly (nearly killed me the first time I landed after a yump and the car goes diving off as all 4 wheels are in the wrong direction... had to go and show them how to use their gear which was on an unlevel ramp). I have done this DIY but really you cannot do this (very flat floor, strings, vernier calipers, accurate spirit levels and a whole lot of patience). Due to the fact that there is no offical adjustment you will probably be better off with a more imaginative/race garage e.g Overton, Barnetts, Dreadnought.


Kenneth Brown Engineering. Hillington, Glasgow = assured OK .
Barnetts of Mollinsburn near Cumbernauld = recommend
Dreadnought Garage, Leny Road, Callander , Perthshire, FK17 8AL, Scotland = recommended Tel: 01877 331099 http://www.dreadnought-mg.co.uk
Overton Garage, Ellon, Aberdeenshire AB41 8EP , Tel: 01358 711213 - recommended
John Mcinnes Dyce Ltd , 2 Airways Ind Estate, Pitmedden Road, Dyce – maybe?
Arnold Clark Rapid Fit, Craigshaw Rd, Tullos Aberdeen - have issues with lowered cars with big alloys but better than Kwik fit
Pitstop

 

[v5r]

mgrays thanks for the post....

seems like I have had the same experience as you, places i have used so far either don't have a clue, or the skill/patience to get right. Interesting you say there is no official adjustment? I guess you are talking about camber/caster which is probably what mine needs as it been tracked loads of times now..
An earlier post mentioned two bolts at the bottom of the strut? looked at the weekend and there is only one, is this a cam type bolts that adjusts camber or was this advise incorrect? So far I have found subframe adjustment and the strut top mounts have quite large holes to allow you to adjust the position
As you have already tried, i am tempted to diy with the string/laser/inclinometer route, there is lots of advise and instructions for this method on the net, also you can buy camber gauges etc too. I have several other cars too so the tools and knowledge from having ago myself will not be wasted.

 

[mgrays]

v5r,

I have not so much as lifted a wheel off the deck .. second year service is only just due.. first owner seemed to buy a diesel to do 5k miles PA and sell after 18mths... obviously enjoyed loosing money!

Anyway.. all other alignment posts seem to indicate no offical adjustments except for tracking but that they do benefit from 4 wheel alignment .. and that is the norm now on most modern cars.. there does seem a bit of wiggle room due to loose bolts etc .. scary as most production cars never get this set up.. I have worked in auto industry and they just get a quick tracking check in most places. . I am coming from a car that had offical 5 way adjustments via cam bolts on double wishbone suspension.. that too came from a Japanesse factory with settings all over the place.

Watch out for "laser alignment".. can mean nothing more than laser guided tracking.. and there is also "4 wheel tracking lite" where they do tracking but not rear camber .. and not sure they can do the thrust angle. You want to ask for full "4 wheel alignment" with front tracking, caster, camber and rear tracking and castor .. and preferably recommended/used by the racing car folk. Otherwise it makes the average mechanic's head hurt too much

DIY .. I did this second but last alignment.. it was fine but I got the thrust line wrong so the axles were not aligned to each other.. I was driving down the road sideways according to others and went from 3.5mm to canvas in about 800 miles.. of course I was above the Artic Circle in Sweden when I found out so had to find rarish tyres and get an alignment in Norway somewhere.. while doing about 320 miles over trunk roads with 50mph max in one day. The one time I have been done for speeding by laser rifle by 2 Helgas with Volvo and a credit card machine (£120 on the spot) - slowing down coming into a town This was about 4-5 years ago I did the alignment and not many folk had even heard of it outside specialist garage lot.

And last little bomb... do you do alignment with or without driver weight in place! .. ultimate is with 70kg of cement bags which I used to but as these cars are hatchbacks with more likely mileage with other masses inside car this is wasted IMHO

 

[Crafoo]

tdi sport 130 has pulled to the left since new and now worn the inner edges of the front tyres badly. Had 4 wheel alignment carried out about 6mths ago and has made no difference. The place I used said there was no adjustment for caster/camber...
read some threads that you can loosen the sub frame and adjust that way, tried it today and you can get alot of movement... Can anyone recommend some where in or around aberdeen to get this sorted, need somewhere with 4 wheel alignment equipment and the skill to sort it out once and for all...........

is there any way to measure these angles diy????

Got the same problem with mine, and i'm currently in the process of trying to get my last set of tyres replaced under warranty because of the shocking setup of the car, they didn't last 9k. I can't see how when you look at the front wheels and can actually see they are pointing away from each other Seat can turn around and say that's fine. Surely making them point away from each other is doing nothing for the handling of the car, I know it being setup for negative camber should make it better in the corners but if it's destroying tyres in less than 10k I'd rather mine be setup like any other car.

just did a quick search to find out a bit more about wheel alignment.

http://www.kwik-fit.com/wheel-alignment.asp

http://www.kwik-fit.com/image-popup.asp?i=png/wheel-alignment_large.png&w=500&h=233&a=Check your tyre pressure

The two right pictures are pretty much how my car looks.

 

[rashcupra]

the lower you go the harsher the camber setting gets too