Wheel Alignment/steering Problem Is Now Fixed

[tappet]

Hi guy's

i was trying to fix the steering issues on my girlfriends r33gtst over christmas..

on the highway it was dangerously kicking out the the rear now every and then...

so we looked into the issue and fitted a hicas lock bar,

then booked in to Bob Jane tmart at beenleigh for a full wheel alignment..

on the drive in it actually seemed pretty good with the bar locked.....

we left the car for about 30 mins and came bak to pick it up..

On picking up the car they gave me a spec sheet on the settings which i took no notice of..

they told me the car had a bent rear stubaxle and the rear right camber was out over 1 degree..

On the drive home i noticed the car was steering the rear again and was all over the shop on bumpy road...

i had a look at the sheet and they set the rear toe in at 5.4mm ???

i got on here and did a few searchs to find it should be at about 2mm toe in the rear

no one was open over christmas and my girlfriend had to drive the car over 200klms.......

so a few days later i went back and questioned them about the alignment settings....

I was told i was an idiot and that i had no idea what i was talking about...

they told me to write down the settings i wanted and they will set it but it would wreck my tyres..

i didn't trust him at all after that so i left...

later that day I went to coomera tyreworld who has a brand new laser wheel alignment machine...

They told me my castor bushes were stuffed and they could not do the alignment untill they were fixed...

i got some New bushes and went back the next day.. ( i was wondering why bobjane could not see the bushes which were clearly leaking?? )

On the machine we saw it had 9.9mm of toe in on the rear!!!! and no sign of bent stub axle???

then for the front 8.3 mm of toe out!!!!

nothing like the spec sheet i was given...

coomera tyreworld had some specs and set it to 1mm of toe in on the rear and 2mm toe out in the front...

the camber was set to 1.2 in the front and 1.3 in the rear ...

On the drive home the car handled superb... ..

on the highway and even throught the rough twisties near my place..

it even rained for a bit so i got a chance for a little bit of fun

here are the spec sheets from both the places...

Please guys beware of bodgy tyre shops... the big ones seem to be the worst...

[Simon-S14]

all bob janes seem to be equally as bad, i'll never ger anything done by them simply due to the fact that they have no real clue when it comes to anything other then a falcon or commo...

[Syphon]

definately hard to find a decent aligner these days, especially on the gold coast!

Once you find a good one, stick with them.

FYI, the rear camber does have some slight adjustment but it's SFA from memory. The camber settings are pretty good. I would take a guess that your pretty much at standard ride height ?

Also, just so you are aware, they have set 0.5mm toe IN on the front, and 1.0mm toe IN on the rear.

Not too bad, should drive heaps better than the previous alignment rofl. SK recommends dialing in a neutral toe setting on the front and approx 2mm toe in on the rear.

Good to hear you got looked after.

[heslo]

Had the same problem with Bob Jane myself, they give SFA about their customers and when you do have a complaint, they don't want to listen

[Busky2k]

I've found that if you take the same car to 3 different alignment places, they all read differently even though the car hasn't been touched.

For example 1 workshop read +0.5 camber on my FR yet another workshop read -0.6 camber on the same rim on the same day.....

Makes me kinda wonder sometimes...

[Syphon]

Hehe someone needs their aligner recalibrated that's for sure

[Busky2k]

Thats right, but the question begs, who is right and who is wrong!

[djr81]

Well, from what I have seen having a wheel aligning machine out of calibration is not unique to Bob Janes. Nor is having operators who don't know/care. In anycase you will always get variations when you take a car off & then drive it back on the aligner.

Best advice is to ask when they last had it calibrated & also to take your own alignment specs as they don't always have them & you don't know what they have. Be careful when doing the toe in as sometimes people get confused with per side measurements & total measurements.

[Busky2k]

Speaking of alignments, is it necessary to load the car whilst on the machine? I always thought by having someone sit in the drivers seat, it would be more accurate..

[tappet]

^^^^it shouldn't really make that much of a difference but it does make sense.....

when i went in to coomera they had a new smick laser aligner and calibrated the machine that morning.... it has now been a while since the alignment and it fells awesome... on the highway and low speed it still feels direct and stable.... i also told the mechanic about sydneykids specs and he advised to go with his settings... if i was not happy he would set it to whatever i wanted for free...

im not going to change it if it is already good...

i am very happy with the service and would reccomend them to anyone...

[Haysey]

like i said in another thread

got new tyres on the vectra and they aligned it, steering wheel was still out, asked them to change the wheels on my skyline before i went to the drags, they managed to crack my front bar, almost dropped it off the jack and stuffed some playing up bushes totally that i couldnt drive the car....

definately would not go back there