So I’m driving home and I realize that my car is drifting right. Again. Despite paying for an allignment about 2000 miles ago.
I think that one possible fix would be a steering wheel feature where the wheel can move and the tires don’t move. So you could switch it over to this system, move your wheel a centimeter over and your steering matches your tires again.
1 would this even work to solve the problem?
2 would this even be feasible engineering-wise?
3 how big of a safety issue might this be? I mean obviously you could only use it with the car off but…
Wheel alignments are more complicated than matching the steering wheel position. There are adjustments in multiple directions and you have to do them on both sides of the car.
If your wheels are out of alignment and it pulls to one side, it’s still going to pull even if you rotate the steering wheel around to compensate. Yes, if the wheel is in a neutral position you’re going to go straight, but you will have to apply torque to the steering wheel to keep it in that position.
Most cars already have this - sort of.
The end of the steering shaft is splined, so you can place the steering wheel on it in any of 30 or so positions.
The trick is to disassemble the wheel without damaging the stereo controls or setting off the airbag. Needless to say, this is more of an “If you’re replacing the steering wheel” operation rather than an adjustment.
If you need to do this, it’s an indication of a deeper problem (tires, alignment, ball joint, etc.). You do well to address that, rather than one of its symptoms.
Is it drifting right or is the steering wheel just not centered? If you let go of the wheel and it pulls to the right, it could be the alignment, but it sounds like when you center the steering wheel, the car is pointing slightly to the right and it could simply be that the steering wheel is not centered. If that’s it, it’s only aesthetics, but can be fixed by adjusting the tie-rod. I think you’d want to shorten drivers side and lengthen the passengers to adjust the steering wheel to the right.
To further muddy the waters, the front could be in perfect alignment, but the rear wheels could be out of alignment causing the problem.
Are there any cars out there where the wheels are not permanently aligned.
Very few, if any, people steer straight by aligning the steering wheel in some ‘straight ahead’ position. Normally the car should steer straight of its own accord on normal, straight, roads so that you do not have to give any consistent input via the wheel.
It sounds more as if you want some sort of trim control such as you find on aircraft - although this would be a seriously bad idea as it would allow you to mask problems that are almost certainly causing accelerated wear of the tyres and possibly other components.
It’s worth noting that a car with perfectly straight wheels will pull slightly right when driving on the right side of a humped road. Many roads have a slight hump to facilitate water drainage.
The DIRAVI steering system will always straighten the wheels, even when stationary.
I can’t think of making any car with movable wheels that would permanently stay aligned. As joints, rod ends, springs, shocks, and tires wear, stuff is going to have to be adjusted.
Many cars are not perfectly ‘aligned’ on purpose. By requiring non-zero toe, caster, and camber, the engineers can achieve various performance characteristics.
If the steering wheel is simply not oriented perfectly upright when driving straight, it is not a problem in and of itself, as long as the car drives OK. BUT if it was straight before the alignment, and was off-center afterward, it could point to some funky adjustments having been made to get the car in-alignment. For example, if you had an extremely worn out spring on one side, and the technician made wild adjustments to get the thing aligned without replacing the spring, then the steering wheel might not be centered after that. Its definately worth asking the shop if your steering wheel is now off-center.
If the vehicle is actually pulling (like if you let go of the wheel, the car wants to veer one way or another), then it could still be an alignment, tire, suspension issue somewhere.
It could be nothing, but definately have it looked at… My pappy always used to say something like sputters and knocks could leave you stranded, but shimmies and shakes could leave you dead. (wish I could remember his exact phrase, coz it was way better, but you get the point).
Thanks for the advice all. The car is definitely pulling to the right. As in, it’s a straight road, I let go of the wheel, and the car wants to drift quite noticeably off the road. It doesn’t take a lot of pressure on the wheel to get it to go in a straight line, but I’d still prefer to have it be no pressure.
I’ll do some more experiments and then maybe take it back into the shop.
Alas, it appears my idea of a steering wheel allignment may not be as feasible as I originally envisioned.
While many do not have provision for caster or camber adjustments, all have adjustable toe-in.
Not to radically hijack this thread, but what’s the theory behind not having camber/caster adjustability. My dad just had to have his car (chrysler 300M) aligned, and they had to order a special camber adjustment kit to correct it, because the manufacturer provided no capacity for adjusting this.
I think it comes from the notion that unibody design can maintain those angles indefinitely. While this is sometimes true, real world experience shows that it’s not always true. A certain amount of wishful thinking is involved, but also it’s less expensive to design and produce front ends that don’t need to be adjustable.
Manufacturers could switch to removable steering wheels as used in race cars, that way, drivers could position the wheel as they wish, however, as noted above that would not solve a pull to one side or the other.
If you’re willing to put a little work into an experiment and potentially save yourself some time and money then do a left/right swap of the front wheels and take it for another test drive. See if the direction and/or strength of the pull in the steering wheel changes.
It was my impression that a properly aligned vehicle usually ‘pulls’ (drifts really) slightly to the right because most road surfaces are crowned for drainage. Driven on a flat(er) surface like a parking lot or service station pad the vehicle should track straight.
The effect is more pronounced the wider the tires, so sports cars tend to do this. It’s easy enough to test on a 2-line highway. Right line, car pulls to right, left lane, car pulls to left. If it’s really bad it could be a symptom of a toe problem.