He would do everything to center of specs, not just within specs.
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One shop I used dialed in the front toe as:
L: -0.04 R: +0.03
Said as long as total toe was less than 0.08 it should be fine.
I had them reset the toe to be slightly positive on both sides: +0.03, +0.04.
On their dime.
Looks pretty centered and good to me…
I like -0.03 total toe on the Corolla and Vibe/Matrix…
Same vehicle? For no extra fee? While you wait?
Might have to wait until the next day for camber adjustment bolts to arrive. Then extra time to shift the sub frame to adjust the caster.
Unless you are experiencing a pull to the left, those minor adjustments will be pointless.
Everyone wants to maximize tire life but since you replace your tires because of age (dry rot splits), not wear, fine tuning is unnecessary. Even if the settings were dead-center, the results might only offer an additional 1,000 miles of tire wear.
For a front wheel drive vehicle? 0.07 toe-in seems ok for a church bus, but not a Honda.
The shop I used goes by total toe, not the side to side values. They explained that the Caster angle would equal the wheels out, even if one wheel is static toe out and the other static toe-in.
Front Toe on a 2008-12 Accord is 0 degrees, with total toe in or out up to 0.08deg.
That equates to up to 0.04deg in or per side.
Driving my Accord with 0 deg toe was at best a white-knuckle experience. Turn-in was too aggressive, and I nearly turned in to one persons front yard, and another’s mailbox…!
I had the shop dial in +0.03(toe in) for total toe 0.06, and I could relax my grip on the steering wheel considerably afterwards! Car tracked much straighter at 55mph on the highway.
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Excessive toe-in does provide a better steering “feel”, but not something I would recommend.
The slightest bit of steering and suspension wear on an aging vehicle can cause a wandering feel in the steering.
Only if you don’t mind the car dog tracking down the road! The thrust angle should be as close to zero as possible to make the car handle the same right to left. These setting would run the rear to the left of the front.
I used to run -0.02 on both rears on my Saturn race car… total 0.04 degrees toe out. Usually a little less on the front… 0.02 to 0.03 total to make it turn better.
My point Mustang was, how could a shop allow a car off the alignment rack with toe set that way, caring only about total toe, even if one side is toed in and the other, out?
As I said earlier, I brought the car back a couple days later, and they achieved the same total toe with more equal side to side settings.
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I could never drive a car set up like that, except on a track. Toe out on the rears? That would get the most devout followers kicked out of Alignment Mecca.
I’m a twitchy driver to start. Combined with a twitchy alignment, and I’m all over the road!
No offense intended… my comment was about your alignment tech’s assertion that total toe was the only thing that mattered.
Toe out front and rear in the Saturn was not hard to drive at all. Not twitchy.
The car was registered and insured for road use since we had to race it as GM built it. I took an 1100 mile trip with it. I set the rears to 0.03 total toe-in at the rear and left the front at 0.02 out. At 73 mph I could feelt the toe going to zero because of the deflection of the suspension rubber. The on-center resistance dropped to zero. It was a little fiddly to drive but it got 40 mpg on that trip.
Easy, one side inner and outer tie rod end are seized together (no longer adjustable), or jam nut is seized on the inner tie rod end and the customer is broke and can’t afford to replace one or both tie rods, or they are on back order or for whatever reason and you don’t want it to eat the tires, so you adjust the total toe so it doesn’t wear the tires…
Example, older Camrys used a multilink rear suspension with a rear forward and a rear rearward “control arm” (if you will), the rearward was adjustable (toe bar) for adjusting the rear toe. They were notorious for seizing up even when adjusted every 5-10K miles, even here in the south… So if one was out of spec and frozen, we would simply adjust the other side for a correct total toe…
Also can be done for camber when eccentrics are seized also…
That is why it is necessary to re-center the steering wheel before recording final measurements, the customer is sure to misunderstand the results.
Those readings don’t prove that the wheel is off-center, or the vehicle won’t track straight, it is more likely that the steering moved before the final measurements were recorded. For example: after verifying caster values.
And that reminds me of another thing:
The last three shops I had cars aligned at over the last 15 years don’t use a steering wheel lock. If I were doing alignments, or owned a business that did, I would insist on a steering wheel to seat lock.
Hunter Engineering developed a system that does not require the use of a steering wheel holder, about 20 years ago.
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Funny, I used to manage an indy shop that was running 2 Hunter alignment machines using Wintoe which specifically excludes the use of a steering wheel lock. I doubt you would insist on going backwards.
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Well I told the story before. I didn’t like the way my riv was handling so had an alignment done with the newest tech. Still didn’t like the handling and seemed dangerous on the freeway especially on a curve in the rain.
So I took it to the bear alignment shop that I had used back in 1969. The guy was still alive, just a little less robust and still had the same old mechanical equipment used 50 years before. He called me at work telling me I had to come look. Being 50 miles away I said just fix it bur he insisted. Out of the four body bolts holding the cradle on, three were non functional. I just said do what you can. I had picked up new mounts at the Gm dealer and he worked and worked replacing them. A couple days later it was fixed and worked fine. The whole cradle was ready to fall off but the kid on the high tech equipment never caught it.
I think the bill was somewhere around $250. I would have kissed him if he wasn’t so greasy.
I didn’t even mind the grease he got all over my steering wheel. Old guy, old shop, old equipment, but done right.
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Oh, you don’t know…
My best years indeed lay behind me!
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You say you’ve got a great future behind you, who am I to argue?
Sometimes when you ask for a wheel alignment, you get a wheel alignment.
Because service writers do such a poor job interviewing the customers, I road test the vehicles before I start to try to understand why the customer wants an alignment.
Sounds like your transmission mechanic left the sub-frame bolts loose, that might not show on the alignment display screen.
If I can master the Finney method…