I have only ever used the proper (old style) Dunlop optical gauges for setting the front wheel alignment and if the equipment is used properly it is as accurate as your all singing all dancing laser alignmet jobbies. But the equipment is only ever as good as the person operating it and with the Dunlop gauges it isn't a quick five minute job.
Just to give you a brief idea: if your steering wheel is running central but your tracking is out then as long as the person makes equal adjustments to the n/s and o/s track rods then the steering wheel will remain straight afterwards. If the steering wheel is offset and the tracking is out then it requires more movement on one track rod than the other so that when the tracking is set spot on, the steering wheel will become centralised too. But this is quite tricky and the only way to tell if your adjustments are enough is to road test the car and see where the steering wheel lies. It could take 4 or 5 goes depending on how picky you are at the steering wheel being dead straight.
So where does all of this fall down when you take your car to a garage? Well firstly if the track rods are rusty and seized then the garage will probably not spend then time unseizing both of them and thus if your tracking only needs a tweek they will only unseize and adjust one side. Also it is not in the garages interest to spend hours trying to get the tracking spot on and the steering wheel aligned - normally they have a set charge for a tracking check and will only care about getting in somewhere near and then onto their next job.
The moral of the tale is to find a garage that is prepared to spend the time getting everything right to your satisfaction or failing that you just have to do these jobs yourself.
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good post simon if i can just add,any garage that uses the guages see if they align them up to parallel before they even put them up to your rims,they should Also you really need to physically push the car forward and backwards a few times prior to actually checking,this settles everything out and will give a true set of figures to read from ,this procedure needs doing each time you have road tested the car
anything else?
make sure tyres are at correct pressures
make sure tracking man removes wheel trims
doesnt put the guages on a lead weight
that your rims are not out of true
that the floor he is doing the tracking on is level
finally quite a few cars sometimes need 4 people sitting in the car to track properly (how does one get round that without car specific knowledge?---------------tip experience)
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The first time I went to the mechanic I use for my car it was to change a bottom arm on the front suspension whose rubbers had been destroyed by beastly speed bumps.
He didn't charge much and as part of the tracking adjustment following the replacement automatically centred the steering wheel, which had been a bit off even before the bottom arm went.
When I commented on this he muttered something to the effect that doing a job properly was easier in the long run.
That is why I call him an engineer (he does too) and recommend him to anyone needing work done on their car. Such people are like gold dust.
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>>That is why I call him an engineer
Lud - why didn't I come to you in the first place?
I needn't have wasted 5 years of my time in getting to university and doing an IMechE accredited engineering course. I suppose that the time I'm currently wasting in preparing my papers to obtain chartered status could also be bypassed, by, say, torquing your wheel nuts up properly?
:-)
In an agricultural way, with the steering wheel in the straight ahead, I use a long plank of wood, held against each front wheel, to get the steering pretty much straight before adjusting the toe in/out. All I do, is to adjust so the plank is the same distance away from the edge of the rear wheels. So, although the tracking may be miles off at this stage, I know the error is equal side to side, and the wheel is straight.
Simon is right in his description of how most garages do this work. The fundamental problem is that in most cases, the customer will not pay for the job to be done properly, because the customer has seen some place advertising it being done cheaply.
Number_Cruncher
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Lud - why didn't I come to you in the first place? I needn't have wasted 5 years of my time in getting to university and doing an IMechE accredited engineering course.
I am not suggesting you are like this in any way NC, nor Aprilia either, but there are qualified engineers all over the place who can't work a tin opener and have never had swarf or grease under their finger nails. Where you find them is in offices doing management carp and messing everything up.
On my mechanic chap, he may well have a qualification of some sort. I'll ask him one day if it seems appropriate.
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If you're anywhere near the South, call in at Micheldever tyres on one of the rare occasions when there isn't a long queue. I am fully conversant with the procedure for tracking and centralising the steering and Micheldever (no connections) made a perfect job of it by adjusting both trackrods. They also started by checking that the steering wheel was centred with the rack, which is where most mechanics go wrong.
They give you a "before and after" print out on completion. That was 70k miles ago - I don't hit kerbs and have a car which goes dead straight with the wheel centred and shows almost perfectly even front tyre wear.
659.
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Bell boy has added a good few points to note about the correct use of the tracking gauges and the do's and dont's with them or you will give yourself a false reading, or at least the mechanic doing it will do.
One other thing that I have found in the past then when I have tracked up one of my own vehicles perfectly on half worn tyres, is that when the tyres have reached the end of their life and I have fitted a brand new set, the steering wheel moved to an offset position when driving straight ahead. I can't explain why this should be, unless it has something to do with this cone effect whilst wearing, but my point being that the tracking is best aligned with a pair of brand new tyres on the front.
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It's the cone effect. I've just noticed it myself, having fitted two new front tyres, the steering is now off about 3 ".
It just shows that tracking and steering wheel alignment are different things. The trackling can be correct, but if the tyres are worn with a bias in one direction, the steering wheel straight ahead position has to be slightly off to compensate.
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Sorry Lud, it's just that you posted up one of the things that is a bit of a red rag to a bull for me;
- mechanics who call themselves technicians, but don't have any technician level qualifications
- even worse, mechanics calling themselves engineers because it sounds good
- washing machine, photo-copier and appliance repairmen who call themselves engineers (and are so-called by their companies to justify a higher charge)
Unfortunately, there's no licensing or regulation of engineers, and the term isn't protected. If anyone so desired, they could call themself an engineer with impunity.
You are right in the other aspect - the requirements for hands-on experience for mechanical engineers during their training at degree level is laughably minimal, and those students I shared the course with who came from a traditional school GCSE, and college A level background in the main didn't know one end of a screwdriver from the other.
Number_Cruncher
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Always good to see a C Eng getting upset, I've had to sack a few over the years for incompetence. It's odd how the C Eng qualification appears to replace ingenuity with blinkered by-the-book buck-passing.
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So Micky, perhaps I shouldn't bother putting my papers in to the IMechE then? I'll be better off without C Eng?
I don't really regard C Eng as a qualification - you certainly don't have to be good technically to get it, and I've seen some chartered engineers who couldn't stress a simply supported beam with a UDL! Perhaps I'm being naive, but I see it more of a marker of integrity, a commitment to further my professional development, an agreement to work within a code of conduct - oh!, and something good to put on my CV to help me into a higher paid job in the future!
Number_Cruncher
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Good luck with the C Enging, but don't expect tugging of forelocks by the non C Engers in the UK, different in Europe though.
After many years involved in construction and engineering, I realise that my life would be far more agreeable if I had spent 20 years selling dodgy financial products to all and sundry, it's either that or I should have bought into Lud's clip joint just off Wardour Street.
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Perhaps it is no coincidence that small left-wing publishers and clip joints rub shoulders 'just off Wardour Street', Micky. There may well be a difference in profitability however.
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i think micky is "off track" ;-)
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"off track" ;-)
Thanks bell boy, that is praise indeed from a supreme "off tracker".
>Wanders off to discover poetry<
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Good luck with the C Enging, but don't expect tugging of forelocks by the non C Engers in the UK, different in Europe though.
true, very true. you can add ph.d and mba to that.
may interest an employer who is looking for a specialism initially, but to most employers it is the soft-skills that matter if you want to make progress in your "career".
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it is the soft-skills that matter if you want to make progress in your "career".
What are soft skills Dalglish? Anything to do with handling and spreading cattle manure by any chance?
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>>to make progress in your "career".
I think that's true.
Although I'll make sure I put these things onto my CV, getting a highly paid job isn't my be all and end all. I've been lucky, and have had a wide variety of jobs at varying levels. Despite moving around a bit, I've only ever been out of work for 7 days. What I am looking for is constant change and technically interesting work - if my qualifications get me as far as the interview, then they have served their purpose.
I would hate the idea of people tugging their forelocks, as suggested by Micky above just because of a qualification. On the other hand, I'm happy to be praised when I've done something a bit special during a project, or even better, when I've been instrumental in winning a contract that gives work to others.
To get back "on-track", you can keep a running check, by rubbing your hands across the tread - when the tracking is causing tyre wear, the block edges feel rough one way, and smooth the other. I did this today, on the Merc which is still relatively new to SWMBO and I. It needs the tracking doing ASAP, so, I'll be fiddling about with my agricultural bits of kit next weekend (SWMBO allowing!)
Number_Cruncher
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">getting a highly paid job isn't my be all and end all.<"
Yes, I remember that. My career advice to my kids was to earn enough to retire at 40, your life is then your own.
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... Anything to do with handling and spreading cattle manure by any chance?
lud - you nearly got it. it is knowing how to do muckraking without geting caught at it. but more important, it is knowing how to avoid getting caught by that when a lot of that hits the fan.
oh yes, and make sure your tyre treads don't get full of it either.
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