chris2470

Hi All,
I've been ringing around for some prices on getting my wheels aligned via the Hunter computer system.
Some quotes are for the front only and others for all 4, but can all 4 be adjusted or only the front pair??
Which option shall I take? Advice please

Cheers Chris

vRSLen

I thought the rears were fixed?

Unless you have damage....

__________________
Current car: Black MKII Octavia vRS Combi
Previous: Black MKI Octavia vRS Combi
Black Fabia Elegance 100 BHP

Liverpool-Lad

Probably use shims?

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2001 Rally Red Octavia vRS...remap complete Whiteline rear ARB, Superpro dogbone bush - 225/45/17 Goodyear Eagle F1 Aysmmetrics and lots of V-Power!

Smiles all 'round

fatty5000

The rear is fixed but iirc the fronts are alligned off them, so 4 wheel is called for.



HTH

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Malc

Had mine done a while back with balancing of all 4 wheels.
Balancing check was free, found it was mentally out and they charged £25 notes to sort it which was a bargin given the improvement

greg123

Only the front is adjustable. If the rears are out, you got issues from a crash.

I use dynamic tracking on my own vehicles. It's time consuming and a pain to do, but it's deadly accurate.

I don't care HOW much the top end laser systems cost, they can be incredibly accurate BUT they only test your vehicle when it's STILL. So flex in bushes and joints, any slight movement when you take up the drive and dynamically the tracking is out. Normally this isn't much, but the drive over system I use tests it under load and sets the tracking taking into count how worn the bushes are, any flex etc. I have as an experiment done this back to back from a 4 wheel laser to the dynamic. The laser felt okay, it drove okay, but the feel and accuracy on the steering after the dynamic tracking was noticable - better!

This also means you can compensate for poly bushes, modded suspension etc where mfr's data doesn't exist. Those 'settings' they give you are only relevant for a brand new car and come from dynamically measuring what setting gives correct tyre scrub in the first place.

Greg.

gmaster

Tell me more about this dynamic tracking very interested not heard of this before?

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Black octy mk1 VRS... with some mods.

greg123

Don't know what to add really! The principle is that what alignment is trying to do is leave the wheels so that when you are driving there is no scrub. Scrub is where a wheel is trying to go left or right relative to the other one and caused by toe-in and toe-out. Wheels need to be parallel to very slightly toe-out, depending how you are trying to set the handling (the latter turns into a corner easier, the former requires less direction changes on a motorway).

As I said, even the laser systems don't take into accout wear. They just set you to a factory speck, which is essentially where a guy in the factory on the first production model kept adjusting the tracking till there was no scrub measured, then he measured the alignment settings at that point and they became the alignment toe-in in the service manual.

The dynamic system you drive over, under power thus taking up the slack in the suspension, a device which measures the scrub directly. You then adjust the tracking till you get no scrub. At which point your alignment is bang on, possibly better than factory, and taken into account any wear.

What it doesn't do is align all the wheels relative to each other, so after aligning I have to go see if the steering wheel is out, if it is I adjust that, then re-check the tracking, etc etc - so it can be a very long winded process. On a well maintained car the 4 wheel is much quicker to do and gets you near enough.

But like I say, the steering feel on my cars can't be beat, it's *spot* on.

Greg.