Tracking

The steering on my landy has always been quite "twitchy". I'd never thought to check the tracking because I've taken it to two garages locally and they've both said it was spot-on.

Anyway tonight I thought Id check it myself. I marked the front centre of both front tyres with a white marker and rolled the car forward until they were both in the 9 o'clock position i.e. marks at front, measured between the two with help of a mate then rolled forward til the marks were on the back and measured back to back. Rolled back 6' and do it again to recheck.

They were toed _out_ by 1" front to back! I've reset them to be just under 1/4" toed in - does that sound right?

Drives much better now I can take my hands off the wheel and don't feel like I have to cling on with both hands when going round bumpy corners!

Goes to show all those laser gizmos are no good if the operator doesn't know how to use them...or they're not set up right...

i bet it was a bit odd

Interesting, I got my tracking checked and they it's fine.

Did you take the measurement between the two white marks?

Aye, it was quite giddy....still not sure I've got it right. Book says 1.2-2.4mm toe in, just not sure where that is measured to? On one diagram in the book it looks like it is rim-to rim, in another at a point extended out to just behind bumper and just in front of wheel arch curve at the back.

I've probably got it set too toed in now so will fettle it at the weekend...

Don't trust em SpringDon! This Landy twice, my Mazda took about 6 goes to get it driving nice and destroyed a set of tyres in the process all by garages including some big nationals who got it wrong.

I use two straight eight foot steels strapped to the wheels,small brackets contact the rims to keep them true,measure close to wheel then at the end of the bars when both the same your wheels are parallel then half a turn on the track rod will give about one degree of toe in.

got a set of heavy cast pointers and a tube very easy

Thanks for the ideas - my method is maybe not the most accurate - but after all this is a Landy. I was considering tacking up a couple of bits of square section to make some pointers but the accuracy wouldn't be that much improved unless you can ensure that the bars are 100% straight. Doing a wheel spin test should be pretty accurate though

What I'm really not clear on is that the track is specified in mm not degrees. There is no mention of how far from the rim. If you measure the track at say 50cm from the wheel centre it will measure half what it would at 1m from the centre etc.

I would like to get it right as tyres aren't the cheapest!