wolfbeast

I just bought my RX8 and am really happy with everything. I have been spending time learning everything about the car and getting used to the sounds and feels of driving.

One thing i have noticed is that the alignment is not dead on. For example, if I set the wheel strait and drive for 1000 feet the car drifts maybe 1-2 feet to the right. This is without any correction from the steering wheel. I was wondering if this is normal? Is it possible to have an alignment that is "perfect". One where the car does not drift in any direciton on a flat road?

This is a very very small thing to notice, but I was wondering what other owners have noticed about this. Does your car drive strait??


Thanks
Neil

trplblk

mine does not drive straight either, I was going to take the car in to the shop for an alignment soon, when I get a chance. I noticed the alignment was off after about 150 miles.

Texas 8

same here. Just by the smallest bit, though.

i3man

1-2 feet for every thousand feet? I'd say you're being a bit picky there. The road could be very slightly tilted. Wind can push a car offline as well. I can see if you car pulled into the next lane within 100 feet that you'd be complaining but 1-2 feet over 1000 feet is nothing.

What bothers me is a misaligned steering wheel. My old Maxima would go straight but the steering wheel was pointed noticably to one side for years Finally got it fixed when I changed tires and had car re-aligned.

wolfbeast

not complaining... just wondering if they're all like that or not. I probably wont do anything about it.

I was concerned because I had hit a pothole that dented the rim a bit. The rim had to be replaced... and i was worried the alignment was off because of it.

Its probably not...

thanx

i3man

I don't think there is any car that can drive straight forever without touching the wheel. 1-2 feet deviation in a 1000 ft would be difficult to argue as being misaligned. With road imperfections and wind, even a perfectly aligned car will probably deviate from a straight line in that distance. Now if you take your hand off the wheel and you find yourself putting a donut on the door of the car in the next lane, then you have an alignment problem :p

swoope

iTrader: (5)

check your air pressures. when new my drivers side were at 31psi the passangers were at 28psi.

it makes a difference. i had the slight pull also and this seemed to have cured it.

beers

91vert

My car seems to drive pretty straight even after 7500 miles on the odometer and some hard pothole/bump hits. I have rotated the tires twice, but I have some serious feathering on the outside edges of the front tires. This tells me that mine must need an alignment already, but it must not be off bad enough to make the car pull to one side or the other.

I have read somewhere before that it is a good idea to have any brand new car aligned after just a few thousand miles because the suspension bushings and other suspension components will "settle in" slightly and skew the alignment a little. Don't know if there is any validity to this or not, but it kinda makes sense.

WHealy

Having had some first year cars before, keep in mind that it takes a while for the computer updates to reach the tire shops and their alingment systems. Somtimes it's a full six to twelve months before they have it. I beleive someone has posted alingment specs, but some shops insist on waiting for the computer updates before they will touch a car.

Also, I usually get my alingment's done at Firestone. At least here locally they have a deal where you basically pay for two alingments and you have a lifetime warentee on it for as long as you own the vehicle. So you can take it back in as often as you like and they will re-aling for you. Of course they better know the proper warm up / shut down procedure!

Gyro

Heres the alignment specs. The dealership I went to used them for reference because the Hunter machine they had did not have the software.

I also have significant feathering on the outer edges. A toe misalignment would cause outer tire wear, however my car was within spec. They said I must have been taking corners too fast.

uuuummm oookaaay.

RX-8Mania

My RX-8 has steering wheel on the right and it happened to my car too. Since the first day I got it, I have to hold the steering to the left a bit (something like 345 angle) to get the car go straight.

GTRay

Guys,

There are a few things that can cause this slight pull. The first thing i would check is the air pressure in the tires. I would inflate the right side to 32-33 and the left side 31-32 before you decide you need an alignment. Run that for a while, maybe 1000 miles or so checking your pressure everytime you fill up the tank.
If this doesn't take care of your problem i would then rotate your tires front to back and have them balanced and again check the pressures religiously. The next step i would take it to have it aligned.

when you have it aligned there are three major areas of concern:

1)Toe - this is the direction the tires are pointed in when the steering wheel is centered. as a rule of thumb i typically set the toe on RWD cars about 0.01-.02 facing out so the front tires look like this \ /. i do this mostly to compensate for front end lift on accelleration - take in mind that this is a relatively SMALL amount of positive toe!

2)Castor - castor is a bit tricky to get right on most cars and often times isn't set to manufacturer's specs because of the work involved. the rule of thumb on castor is to leave about a 0.5* distance between the left and right wheels. for left hand drive cars such as those in the US you want the right side to be approx 0.5* ahead of the left. This difference is there to accomodate for the crown in the road. if the road were perfectly flat you would want your castor to be perfectly even.

3)Camber - i'm sure we're all familiar with this little gem! everyone has seen the absurdly lowered single cam non-vtec 4door honda civic with a cheap set of adjustable coilovers that make it scrape the groud and bow its rear tires out like a young forest gump - well, my friends, welcome to the world of NEGATIVE CAMBER! Camber is one of the settings that you don't really mess with unless you REALLY know what your doing and most of the time it's not even adjustable! Don't concern yourself with the camber settinggs just yet, if it were off you would be able to tell within the first few hundred miles.



as for our 8, it does it too, i noticed it on our second highway trip in the car. in the next could of days i'm going to throw it up on the alignment rack and see what's going on - i have a sneaking suspision that it's not the alignment, rather it's the electric power assist steering playing some tricks, possibly keeping a slight preload on the steering since it doesn't quite know when to expect driver input - but that's just a WAG and is not supported by any kind of factual data :-) so don't go blabbing it to anyone saying i told you so! :-P

more alignment details to come when i get mine on the rack!

Ray

wolfbeast

Thanx for the great info. I think mine is pretty close to dead on so I wont worry about it. But i'll keep an eye out for any change.

I'll probably check the tire pressures just to make sure they are set right.

Thanx
Neil

fxdsconv2000

This may be totaly off but, I've always heard the slight pull to the right is set like that on purpose. That way if you fall asleep at the wheel you will not cross over into on-comming traffic. Every car I've owned has had this slight pull to the right.

GTRay

I've never heard of this before. a slight pull makes no sense to me, what if your in the left lane of a congested 4lane highway? fall asleep and plow accross your lane into the folks next to you? i don't think any manufacturer would take that kind of potentially fatal "precaution" .

i do see how it would have been a valid point in the 40's or 50's before we had major multilane highways but certainly not anymore. what you've heard has prbably been passed down over the years.

i know i certainly wouldn't align a car to have a slight pull, especially if i just sold them a set of 30K mile tires - i certainly would want to be replacing tires under warranty because i couldn't align their car properly! :-)

Ray

flatso

most roads are curved to allow water to run off them. And the bigger tires that are on our cars will tend to tramline and follow the curve of the road.

GTRay

not if the person doing the alignment knows what he's doing - that's where castor comes into play. generally the taller and wider the tire the higher you have to go with your cross-castor measurement.

on some trucks with monster tires on them and big lifts it isn't unusual to see the right side 1.5-2.0* ahead of the left side in order to compensate for the crown in the road.

Ray

MazdaManiac

iTrader: (3)

Adjusting caster to compensate for road crown on a passenger car is a horrible and inexcusable concession.
The crown is never uniform (if it exists at all - the roads around here have all different sorts of grain, crown, ruts, patching and concavity) and would switch direction on a divided, multilane road from positive to negative depending on which lane you are in.
The car pulling to one side or the other with a good alignment on changing road surfaces is a good thing.
You will want to know when the surface has changed deflection or when the contact patches aren't uniform.
The only "adjustment" to uniform alignment specs that is acceptable is to allot for the weight of the driver.

GTRay

Adjusting the castor AND the camber is very necessary when significant changes are made to the dynamics of the suspension. Dramatically increasing the size of the tires and altering the suspension geometry by raising or lowering it canges the way a vehicle behaves when aligned to factory specs. you can't expect a truck that came from the factory with 275\70\16 tires to exhibit the same driving characteristics as the same truck with 40"x10" super swampers and 6" suspension lift - it's just not going to happen, that truck is going to drift to the right and tire wear is going to be horrible - changing the castor/camber is part of the process involved in making that car drive straight down your average road.

however, with my experience aligning cars it's more clear to me than ever that every car is a different animal due to mileage and condition.

Ray

MyLadyDeb

I'm also finding a slight pull - was going to check the wheel alignment when I got first oil change at 3K - at about 2,200 now. Been that way from day one. Sometimes right on - other times pull. When I go around a curve I have to hold on tight to the wheel - if I let go it'll really swerve away - figured it's just the nature of the beast - lower to the ground, bigger tires. I did increase the air pressure in the tires tho to 32 on all 4 tires. My sensor light kept going on when the weather dropped (I'm in So. Florida and it was pretty chilly here a few weeks ago). Haven't had the light come on since - of course it's also been warmer.

Gord96BRG

Another point - someone mentioned checking alignment after a few thousand miles because bushings settle, etc - you're assuming that a car is properly aligned from the factory, and that's a big (and incorrect) assumption!

All car manufacturers specify a pretty wide range of acceptable readings for alignment, and within that range you can get good handling, not so good handling, pull one way or another, etc. Note, all within factory specs! Also, at the factory, the alignment is set so that it's within specs, which as mentioned leaves a lot of room for variance side to side, etc. Never rely on a car being properly aligned from the factory. I'm quite certain that the front of my RX-8 has slight positive camber, which from Gyro's post is allowed by Mazda - but certainly isn't by me!

When the snow is gone and the summer tires go back on, I plan to have my RX-8 properly aligned - and that does NOT mean taking it to any old shop and they say "yeah, it's within specs now". It means that I tell them the exact numbers I want it to be on each corner for camber, castor, and toe, and they hit them dead-on, no side-to-side variance (OK, I'd let them have 0.05 degrees ). Expect to pay extra for a quality alignment, and ask the local sports car club or autocrossers where they get their alignments done to find a good shop.

Regards,
Gordon

PS - camber is adjustable at all 4 corners on the RX-8

tpryor

And - the alignment is meaningless unless you are IN the car while it is being aligned. You would be amazed at the difference in alignment "loaded" or "unloaded".

I, too, am very "****" about alignment. With me in the car, I expect all the specs (which I have specified) are exact when complete. The guys who align my car now understand the need for perfection, and have spent however long it takes each time (I have had about 5 alignments so far) to get it my way.

I am due for another one pretty soon - there is a National Tour coming up in April.........