The Negative camber with the toe issue was in the front tires (sorry had a typo), but yes, the negative camber was corrected in the rear.
It’s not like the car is skewed, and if it is skewed then its only doing it under the acceleration and corrects under braking. I took a video of the wheel when it happens, but I unfortunately can’t attach it.
If you haven’t posted here before there are limits to what you can post. But to post a vdo of any kind, regardless of the limits, I think you have to create a utube first, then provide the utube link. vdo’s aren’t especially helpful here imho, but maybe someone else here can see something amiss.
In the meantime good idea as mentioned above to ask your shop to double check all the control arm bushings, front and rear. And try to obtain and post the current wheel alignment datasheet. & that there’s nothing obviously incorrect about the two new rear tires. Mounted on the rims correctly, not out of round, not wobbling side to side as they are hand-spun. Rotating in the correct direction if designed to only rotate one way. Size of all tires matches the car’s spec. Label is usually visible by opening the driver’s door. Tire pressures ok all around, etc. Might be a good idea for shop to double check the brakes too. Maybe one side is engaging when it shouldn’t, then steering the car.
@lonkey.k_187058 You came here looking for advice. You clearly do not do your own work and it is also clear the shop you took your car to did not find and fix every problem.
You got the best guess and advice that anyone could give you based on your repeated descriptions of what the car is doing. This below is a very good guess based on your limited data:
And this is very good advice;
You got good advice, now it is on you to either take it back to the shop that did your alignment or find a new shop. Tell them what the car is doing, not what you think is wrong.
I’ve had the displeasure of driving a Caliber (the car this Jeep is based on) and I am amazed it made it these 12 years.
I do my own work when I can. I replaced most of the suspension in my Santa fe, but since my divorce and move to an apartment complex, I no longer have a place to work on my vehicle.
I went to the tie rods and loose components based on simple process of elimination based on the information that I was given from the shop.
My consideration from the start of the issue was either my control arm bushings or something to do with the tie rod/whatever work was done.
Please in the future don’t just make assumptions. If I had the space to do the work myself I would.
Sorry about the assumptions but I had no way of identifying that from your post.
If the subframe bolts were loose… maybe some still are, or some control arm bolts are also loose. Or worse, broken welds in the unit body.
I am just going to say this, we just installed (my son) brand new lower control arms ((both) on his Cobalt, he said it had a bad torque steer to it, everything felt tight on the shakedown (wheels off the ground), everything SEEMED good, so I told him to retrace ALL of his steps and he found the lower control arm bolts were not quite tight enough on one side, hit them with the impact once again and the torque pull is now gone, drives as it should now…
My point is, go over all the bolts again, even if just tightened…
I am more concerned about how all the cradle bolts and suspension bolts all got loose in the 1st place…
The cradle will not make both camber angles go negative at the same time, you shift cradles from side to side to adjust total camber if no camber adjustment is factory or aftermarket adjustable, you adjust suspension parts to make both cambers negative…
I hope you’ll let us know what you find out OP. Yours is an interesting problem, not often mentioned here. I’d like to learn what you learn. Also you might want to search the forum database to see if a similar topic has been discussed here in the past. Has your Compass ever been in an accident?
There are a number of possible causes. One person’s experience won’t be much help to the next person unless you just want to create a list of possible causes. The vehicle must be inspected to identify a problem like this.
Taking it back to the shop tomorrow for them to go back over their work.
I will absolutely update. Again, I’m taking it to the shop tomorrow so I will have an answer hopefully then. In the meantime, I’ll say what I think is going on is that there is something loose in the steering from when they worked on it, or something wasn’t tightened how it should have been. My reasons for thinking this are:
The tests I did today:
I take that information and pair it with the following:
I’m just using deductive reasoning here and its pointing to the work that they did on the car, but again, will update when I know.
OP says they have no place to do diy’er repair. Just curious if there are any alternatives for solving this problem? Mostly in the Euro-zone, I’ve heard “lock-ups” are pretty common. A sort of one car garage (often in a multi-garage complex ) you can rent by the month, a place to park & store your car out of the rain. And w/some versions you can do diy’er repairs there too. Is there something like this is the USA? I’ve never seen one in my area.
Shop told me tires were worn down to cords? I never looked so I had no idea? Try looking occcasionally.
Really George? It’s hard to drive five miles on a surface street without seeing a rental garage, any where in size of a large closet to multi bay facilities with electric and plumbing. There is even a “reality” program where people bid on the contents of units where the renters have defaulted on payments.
The OP paid for a steering repair, the repair shop will inspect the vehicle for him.
The OP verified that something is loose and couldn’t identify the problem, would the results be different inside a rented building?
I probably just didn’t read carefully enough, but it’s only just now become clear to me that the shop hasn’t looked at it since the problem began.
This is, IMHO, and in my best guess, a case where something ended up being missed on reass’y. It’s a clear case of “take if back to the shop.” And you’re doing that. If it is local, reputable tire/suspension/alignment shop in your area, then they will like figure it out. If they say they can’t figure it out, just ask whether or not someone actually drove it.
I bought the car from a dealer two months prior to the original incident with the tires being worn to the cords. It had brand new tires on it (I checked the treads). There was no reason to think brand new tires would be worn to the cords in 2 months.
Just so you know and to watch out for.
MC-10217559-9999.pdf
In that case, I would have brought it back to the dealer.
Update:
Issue location: Left front lower control arm.
Problem: there’s a welded nut inside the front subframe that the forward bolt screws into on the lower control arm. Either the threads are stripping on the bolt, or the welds have broken.
According to the shop, the service people at the dealer (or whoever worked on the subframe) knew about the issue because you can tell where they bent the frame trying to get the bolt to tighten.
The service department from the dealer knew about the issue because this issue and the subframe bolts being an issue are a connected thing. Mechanics said it would have been obvious to service when the car was sold to me (3 months ago).
Thanks for the follow-up. Sorry you had this difficulty OP. It’s difficult to respond to your assertions that the problem was known and hidden from you. We’d need to hear from the other side. In any event it sounds like the cause has been discovered, the location id’d, and hopefully you’ll be back on the road with a safe-steering car soon. In the meantime suggest to park it up until it is fixed. It’s too dangerous to drive with a non-functioning control arm imo .
Congrat’s to @Tester for making a good educated guess for the cause.