I took the X350 XJ6 for its annual inspection (passed), but the inspector pointed out an oddity. The left rear tyre is closer to the guard (fender) than the right. He discovered this as the car was in the air and he was spinning the tyre and his fingers caught on the left side, but not the right. Same tyres, same tread depth, no damage to rims and no indication of a crash or any in the records. Also no indication of abnormal tyre wear that one would find if the alignment is out, and the car tracks straight down the road - or at least I think it does.

A while back I replaces the left side rear air strut with a new Arnott air strut when it leaked air, but the right side strut is still in the boot (trunk) waiting to be installed, but no hurry as it is holding air. However, in the inspection, he noticed the right side (older) strut had some "mist" on it. Not enough to fail, but he said perhaps the struts were pulling the wheels differently.

I took photos of both sides.

Any thoughts as to what might be going on?

 

The struts have nothing to do with the wheel position other than vertically. They carry the vertical weight load only. Wheel position is handled by the control arms. This wheel position indicates something wrong with a suspension arm or bushing.

 

And I would be questioning the use of an inspection that passed a car with that much of a suspension problem.

 

I suppose there are two answers to this. I've been taking my cars to this inspector for decades. Sometimes the car will fail but pass, meaning they know when I bring it back, it will have been fixed, but on my terms, not requiring an official certification (not so applicable here, but draconian when it comes to rust). The other answer is the pedantic rules-based check list. They only look at certain things, such as visually seeing a cracked rubber bush. Something that suggests something is not right, but requires taking the car apart, is outside the inspection. So I have a year to figure it out, and on this one will probably make an appointment with the Jag guru a couple hours away.

 

Appreciate that. I wondered how the struts would affect it. I only hope it's a replaceable part, not evidence of crash damage not recorded. Time to learn about control arms.