Hi all,

Despite having the wheels aligned, the car won't drive straight and keep pulling to the right, quite a lot indeed.

I now suspect that there is an issue with the caster and/or camber angles.

I know how the camber can be adjusted, however I'm unclear about the caster: the service manual mentions shims to move around but I fail to see them... does anyone have some picture or a schema that could clarify things?

 

See the attached extracts. The adjuster bolts are No. 14 on the diagram.

 

A trove of information as usual... thanks!

 

have them set the toe again.

car goes straight guaranteed

if your rear subframe bushings are cooked you will have a dynamic alignment system

 

first thing I did, but no dice.
to clarify, I did it myself with a thin rope tied around the car, passing through the center of the wheels.

so both front wheels are (approxmately...) aligned with their rear counterpart. Yet, still pulling to the right. A friend mentioned it could be the caster or camber -- and the other option is that both rear wheels aren't parallel, which would be a problem since as far as I know there is no setting for this, only the camber.

I even tried setting a visibly positive toe, zero difference (the tires are worn and need replacing soon so it's not too bad if I finish them off, but I'd like to make sure I can replace them without seeing uneven wearing right away)

 

put it on a hunter alignment machine. find out your thrust angle

this is not diy level stuff

 

indeed

 

Hmmmm. my first though when reading this thread was some sort of frame damage, however a Hunter
alignment will determine your limits of adjustment.

 

Brakes ok? a seized caliper would do that.

 

Changing toe-in will not solve pulling to one side. Yes, correcting the camber (and possibly caster, to some extent) will solve the pulling (provided, of course, that the overall car geometry is not seriously out).

 

hmm I suppose I'd notice it on the gas consumption but I will check that too

 

ok I found a shop nearby that specializes in "special" cars it seems -- there are maseratis, porsches, an audi r8 in their frontyard so I'm confident they would know what to look and how to properly correct the issue.

got a feeling it won't be cheap but well.

i'll update with their findings when I can have them give it a look!

 

Both of my fronts seized quite badly last year, it did get worse on fuel but these things are so bad on fuel anyway it wasn't a massive change.

 

lol, fair point.
I'll verify that

 

4 months later exactly, I finally had the timeto bring it to a mechanic and have it checked and the wheels aligned.

The mechanic called and said all was ok, he had done the alignment and no issue to report.
(unfortunately, he gave me a bill but no report so I don't know what exactly changed... he has a stellar reputation in the area though, so I don't know what to think).

It seems that it improved a bit -- driving with an horizontal wheel, it runs straight (don't need to turn it a bit to the left anymore, although I need to test that some more).

The main issue remains however: if I stop holding the wheel, it immediately rotates about 15-20° right and the car sways in that direction.

If he did what he said, I'm not sure what the cause for this behavior is. Any idea? (or did he just do nothing on the car...)

 

Try driving on the other side of the road for a while (when there is no oncoming traffic). See if the steering wheel still rotates to the right when you release it.

 

yes, I figured this might be due to the curvature of the road itself, but it happens on every road I tested -- and most importantly, it does not happen at all with my wife's car on the same tracks.

i think i'm just going to go back to the mechanic.

 

If I were you, I’d have the tires rotated side to side only and drive it again to see if anything has changed.

 

Good point. I'll try that today (they are directional tyres but for test purposes it doesn't matter)

 

X308 is very picky when it comes to wheel aligment. Some car's are not and some are. Rear wheels needs to be exactly aligned as do front. Wide wheels underlines the misaligment. Rear camber is the most less affective.


My aligment result.

You may not understand my motherlanguage. So I must translate.

The most right column of greens from the top to bttom are results in degrees:

Front toe sum
Front toe separate
Front camber
Caster
KingPing and sum angle are only measurements.

Rear toe sum
Rear toe separate
Rear camber
Thrust angle

Thrust angle is very important to have as close zero as possible.

With those values car goes straight when the road is flat, steering wheel is straight and stays straight without touching it. Car goes in to the road grooves softly front first, does not twitch in etc. Comes out of the groove likewise. Steering wheel returns close to center by itself, so it has some feel to it. And wheel has same force to turn to both directions from the center. This car like to pull very slightly where the road is tilted. But that is normal beahviour.
My car had same constant pull to the right when I bought it. All values were "in green" so acceptable. But it wasn't that really.