Anyone know about car wheel alignment?

bikingbarney

Adrian C. 

The point is I can feel it's different. 

Whilst I agree with you the readings would be acceptable they are only just acceptable and are upsetting the way the car handles. 


Not sure I've said anything that has warranted the derogatory comments about the car either ? 

Thank your for your input though. 

AdrianC

bikingbarney said:

Whilst I agree with you the readings would be acceptable they are only just acceptable

No, they aren't "only just acceptable".
Four of the five settings are inside the correct range.
One is only just outside. That 1/10th of one degree in how vertical one rear wheel is (whilst the compound angle of both is within spec) will quite simply not cause the car to become as unstable as you describe.

A quick google suggests the standard-fit tyres are about 640mm diameter. A quick play with an angular displacement calculator suggests that difference of 6 minutes puts the tyre sidewall half of one millimetre further from vertical than the acceptable range - which covers five mm.

You are assuming that the only correct value is 0'08 for toe and -1'45 for camber, 0'30 compound. It isn't. That's simply the centre point of the range of correct values.

Not sure I've said anything that has warranted the derogatory comments about the car either ?

It wasn't intended to be derogatory. It was a simple statement of fact to put this into perspective.

TBH, looking at your screenshots, both seem to describe your car accurately. So how do you know which one is the wrong settings? Your car is an Octavia III (5E) with the "sport" independent multi-link rear suspension, produced from week 22 (late May) 2015 on. It fits the description on both. There are two basic rear suspension designs on the MQB platform under your car - and a vast, vast number of other mid-size VAG products - a torsion-beam for lower-spec cars, and the independent multi-link for higher. Yours has the latter. The slightly lower factory ride height of yours compared to other non-softroader-on-stilts MQBs might have a very small impact on the correct settings, but not very much.

If there really is an issue, and not mere over-dramatisation, then you need to look more deeply.

bikingbarney

 Let's be honest - it's not an F1 car. It's a tubby Tesco Value Golf with some stick-on go-faster bits

That doesn't sound like fact to me. That sounds very much like a very silly opinion. 

They have set my car to the wrong settings. They have set it to sport suspension G02. 

On further digging with Hunter UK the correct settings are available for my car on the hunter system and it should be :
Sport suspension RS G07. 
I've got the luxury of being able to compare it to our other car which is another Octavia Vrs that has the correct setting and handles the road much more stable and less fidgety. 

Both have the same RS sport suspension, both have the same wheels. 

Whilst you are right that they are in the green they are only just in the green. Surely they have such a small tolerance as anything outside these settings will upset how the car behaves. 
Being at the just about acceptable limits I can feel a difference. 

AdrianC

No, it is a simple statement of fact. I'm sorry if it offends you, but it's true.

We quite simply are not talking about finely-honed track-focussed suspension to get the last split second of laptiming. We are talking about the warm version of a perfectly generic mid-size family hatch.
An Octavia III like yours is one of many VAG products to use the MQB platform. The Golf platform.
Skoda is VAG's "Tesco Value" brand.
It weighs the thick end of a ton and a half, with a GVW a fag-paper below two ton. You have to admit that's pretty damn tubby.
It's got an engine from the same EA888 family as much of the rest of the range, with some plastic bodykit and minor trim tickles to make it "look faster".

Is there a difference between G02, G05, G07? Probably. God knows what, but it's probably fairly insignificant - damper specs or spring rates, at a guess.
Is it relevant here, given we're talking about one single setting that's half a millimetre, a tenth of a degree, out of spec? No...

Mercdriver

I don't often disagree with you Adrian, but that is quite a rude put down.

MinuteNoodles

I'll throw in a tuppenny. I had my last car done on a Hunter system a few years ago. It immediately felt wrong...by the time I'd done this I'd owned the car over half a decade and done over 80,000 miles in it so knew how it should be and it wasn't right. They checked it and it was in the green. A few weeks later I get a phone call, can I take it back? Turns out there'd been a fault with the equipment and when it was put on the now repaired and recalibrated Hunter it was obvious why it had felt wrong.

Jackmydad

MinuteNoodles said:

I'll throw in a tuppenny. I had my last car done on a Hunter system a few years ago. It immediately felt wrong...by the time I'd done this I'd owned the car over half a decade and done over 80,000 miles in it so knew how it should be and it wasn't right. They checked it and it was in the green. A few weeks later I get a phone call, can I take it back? Turns out there'd been a fault with the equipment and when it was put on the now repaired and recalibrated Hunter it was obvious why it had felt wrong.

I'd wondered about calibration when I read this thread the other day.
I'd wonder about the human "calibration" as well.