Those who Align cars,,,,,in here please

[Jason_D]

Ever worked on a 2002 VW Passait? What a P.I.T.A.! If you have, I need some advice. This past Thursday I replaced the Tie rod ends on one & then tried to align it. In order to adjust the front camber/caster, the entire cradle must come down/over, AAHHH! That is not the purpose of this post though, this is,,,,,

When setting the toe & steer ahead, I cannot get an absolute level steering wheel. This was/is becoming very annoying. I use both a Hunter & a Beissbarth machine & when I take the car off the rack, all numbers are right on & the steering wheel is perfect, I drive it, the wheel is cocked,,,I went through this 3 times. WTF???

Any advise?

 

[krusty the clown]

check the steering centerline it may be dog tracking

 

[Jason_D]

That crossed my mind. I even re-checked the rear, the camber is a little high, but that's the only thing that is remotely out of spec

 

[krusty the clown]

maybe the wheel is crooked trying to compensate for a slight tire pull?

 

[Moose-LandTran]

never done castor/camber on these B6/B7 platform cars, only tracking and i've never had a problem.

 

[Jason_D]

I swapped & even rebalanced the front tires, it still did it. but not as bad. Do you think maybe it's a problem with the electronic steering control?

 

[krusty the clown]

i don't think so. does it pull?

 

[Jason_D]

Not when steering wheel is cocked, but pulls slightly right when level

 

[krusty the clown]

i'm assuming then the steering wheel is cocked to the left. i think your problem is in the rear. can you post your specs?

 

[SpiderGearsMan]

you have to do the aligment after the alignment - mark and turn the tie rods on a road test
we had an old hunter machine at saturn and one at at toyota , that aligned the car , but the wheel was always crooked

 

[Jason_D]

yes, wheel is left. I will get the specs Monday. That's for your input so far. Luckly the car is still in the shop for some other work so I can still get to it.

 

[flb18r]

I sometimes have the same problem as u, I shut my mouth and take my tools with me on the road-test, take out the airbag, drive the car staight, and take the steering out and reposition it.....so now the steering is staight and the car is straight....we use a old *** hunter.

 

[wilbilt]

Do you set the toe with the wheel level and locked and the engine running?

 

[krusty the clown]

I sometimes have the same problem as u, I shut my mouth and take my tools with me on the road-test, take out the airbag, drive the car staight, and take the steering out and reposition it.....so now the steering is staight and the car is straight....we use a old *** hunter.

hack work if you ask me...........the real problem isn't fixed.

 

[Jason_D]

wilbilt, yes the engine is running when toe is set. I learned long ago that with esc, the engine must be on or it'll never be right.

as far as removing the airbag and moving steering wheel to "correct" bad,bad,bad. this only causes other problems in the long run. if you are not going to fix it right, DON"T EVEN TOUCH IT to begin with!!


oh yeah, I did not work today, so i obviously didn't see the car

 

[wilbilt]

wilbilt, yes the engine is running when toe is set. I learned long ago that with esc, the engine must be on or it'll never be right.

What condition are your turnplates in? They must be absolutely free and allow the car to "float". Any stiffness or bind here will come back to haunt you.

A couple of bags of little plastic balls from Hunter are pricey, but make a huge difference in turnplate performance.

Make sure you jounce it well a couple of times and recheck the toe before letting it off the rack.

 

[Jason_D]

Ya know, the turnplates do seem a bit tight sometimes. Usually after about 10* or so. I know the big slip plates at the back are in need of attention.

 

[nissan_crawler]

I sometimes have the same problem as u, I shut my mouth and take my tools with me on the road-test, take out the airbag, drive the car staight, and take the steering out and reposition it.....so now the steering is staight and the car is straight....we use a old *** hunter.

Yeah, except you turn less one way then the other. If you're really lucky, you can bind up the flat cable in the column and break it. No thanks.

 

[billymade]

www.vwvortex.com is your friend; allot of really sharp enthusiasts and techs on their forums. Try this one out dedicated to the model your are referring to! Good luck!
Passat forum: http://forums.vwvortex.com/zeroforum?id=6
technical forums: http://forums.vwvortex.com/zeromain?id=3
website dedicated to Passats! http://www.passatworld.com/

 

[stuckinohio]

I sometimes have the same problem as u, I shut my mouth and take my tools with me on the road-test, take out the airbag, drive the car staight, and take the steering out and reposition it.....so now the steering is staight and the car is straight....we use a old *** hunter.

Wow. You're half right, yet all wrong at the same time.

 

[stuckinohio]

Do you set the toe with the wheel level and locked and the engine running?

It's kinda funny, but I've talked to 3 Hunter guys. 2 reps, and 1 instructor at a training session. I got two different opinons on that. 2 guys said to run the engine while setting up the wintoe procedure, and 1 (the one I didn't really think much of) said it didn't matter. All recommended leaving the wheel unlocked when using the wintoe program, and lock it if you don't use that program. This was before some cars came with electric assist, so their recommendation may be different now.

On a side note I remember while working at a Toyota dealer a TSB that was for centering the steering wheel if it was found off center during the PDI. I guess Toyota got too many warranty claims for alignments on new cars and came up with this several page long TSB on how to mark the rods and such. The warranty time for the TSB was 0.2hr and it took longer to read the damn thing than you got paid. About halfway through reading the thing I said screw this and put the car on the rack which was a hunter with the cameras and wheel targets (can't think of the model number). From the time I pulled on the rack, set the computer up, centered the wheel and pulled off, it was seven minutes. Seemed a lot faster than that darn TSB procedure.

 

[wilbilt]

It's kinda funny, but I've talked to 3 Hunter guys. 2 reps, and 1 instructor at a training session. I got two different opinons on that. 2 guys said to run the engine while setting up the wintoe procedure, and 1 (the one I didn't really think much of) said it didn't matter. All recommended leaving the wheel unlocked when using the wintoe program, and lock it if you don't use that program. This was before some cars came with electric assist, so their recommendation may be different now.

It could be. It's been several years since I've had a car on the rack.

I can tell you that I abandoned the Wintoe procedure almost immediately because it produced an off-center wheel nearly every time. Our Hunter rep would always blame it on sticky turnplates, even after he had just rebuilt them.


I went back to doing it the way I had always done it, which was to lock the wheel and set the toe with the engine running. No issues with that.

Of course, nothing had electric assist back then.

 

[krusty the clown]

i think it's only necessary to have the car running with a recirculating ball steering box.

 

[wilbilt]

i think it's only necessary to have the car running with a recirculating ball steering box.

I did it on anything with power steering as a matter of habit. It worked well for me.