Do tyres Need balanced?

Made perfect sense to me!!!!!

Well, I wondered that too, but I don't *know* that it doesn't under some circumstances. However, I know that it is possible to have incorrect tracking and *not* have a pull to one side.

IME, yes. If it's right, and you don't bugger about with or bend anything, it usually stays right. Oh, and Kwik-Fit and their ilk

Oh yes, this would be an ideal time for Rob or Brian G to drop in and tell you that you could be sued for libel, like they did to Doki.

I had my SD1 'four wheel laser' aligned after I'd replaced the steering rack and a bottom link. Everything else in the front suspension and steering was perfect. I used the centre finder to centralise the rack before fitting the steering column and steering wheel which was exactly on the straight ahead position. After tracking, it wasn't. Not far out, but wrong. They did it again. Better. And again. Nearly right. I gave them up and moved each trackrod a quarter of a turn. Perfect wheel position. Had the tracking checked once more. Still ok. Dunno what a factory uses, but it's more accurate than aftermarket gear.

I think it depends on which gear they've got and what mechanic's operating it. In one of the comics, they're on about Jigsaw racing who have alignment kit that reads as fine as individual minutes of arc.

Can you recommend anywhere within reasonable distance of London?

It looks like Jigsaw's in Kettering and that's further south than I really like to venture ;). I'll have a look if they list anywhere else in the article, IIRC they only mentioned Jigsaw. I'd think any half decent race garage would be able to sort it, and often bodyshops have a) better alignment equipment than your standard tyre fitter and as part of an insurance claim it's not normally horrifically expensive and b) occasionally also run / build rally cars - I know ADR do up here.

Alignment is very much like diagnsotics. The end result is only as good as the person using the equipment.

If you want absolutley spot on alignment, you set the alignment so you get identical angles of lock from both wheels, which should give you spot on TOOT (toe out on turn - all related to the ackerman angle), but the downside is the chances are the steering wheel won't be perfectly in the centre, which is all very well ifyou want absolute best handling. But your average driver doesn't like a squint steering wheel, so you set the tracking to what it should be, then tweak each side to bring the steering wheel back straight. Off course, actually getting the steering wheel straight usually involves a few quick test drives around the block, which means taking a bit more time, but when you're on bonus....

Or you set the steering up as it should be, then pull the wheel off and put it back on it's splines central.

Which works great if your steering wheel is mounted on splines ;-)

Chris

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Doki" saying something like:

I've found a few splined columns have an odd spline, preventing that. Bit of a bugger.

The message from Grimly Curmudgeon contains these words:

I thought they all did it like that!

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Guy King saying something like:

Maybe in more recent times it's become the norm (I don't do much steering wheel off and on-ness nowadays), but it certainly used to be the case the vast majority of steering columns had a uniform spline.

It's bad practice anyway with R&P - the rack should be centred and the tracking set to that. Otherwise you end up with incorrect geometry. And the wheel will always fit to the straight ahead position if the rack is central. Unless something is broken.

The other problem with doing this is that the indicator self-cancelling often ends up working differently from left to right.

Chris