Wheel alignment report interpretation

kiss_my_face

To cut a long story short: I bought a used Peugeot 208. The steering pulled slightly to the left on the test drive, so the dealership said they would sort it.
This is their report. It really doesn't seem to have improved after the alignment. Can anyone interpret this report? There's a lot of red on it! I'll phone the dealership tomorrow, but would be good to be armed with a bit of knowledge. 

Mildly_Miffed

The small figures are before-adjustment figure, the bigger ones the after.

From the top down...

Front toe was wrong on the left, but is now correct each side. This is the easy one to adjust, via the track rod end adjustment.
Front camber is correct, but less so than before. This is adjustable to a limited extent, by adjusting the position of the bolts for the front strut tops on the inner wings.
Front castor was and still is incorrect both sides, now more so than before. Again, this can be adjusted to a limited extent from the front strut tops.

Rear toe is incorrect. This can't be adjusted.
Rear left camber is incorrect. This can't be adjusted.

The way to sort the back end would be replace the rear beam.

glennevis

Wheel alignment involves adjustments in at least 3 planes, so lots of different settings: some angles are measured in degrees (°) the others will be in mm.

The pictures show which plane is being referred to. For example, top centre shows the two front wheels should be toed-in, they're meant to be like that, not aligned in parallel. They were -0.7mm (red) before adjustment so were actually toed-out not in. After adjustment they are toed-in 2.00mm (green) which is now within spec.

The small numbers on each diagram are readings before adjustment. The grey arrows show these settings have changed to the big numbers which are the current settings.

Red means out of spec, so during the alignment procedure the aim is to end up with all Green numbers.

It looks like the garage did the front alignment and not the rear as all the rear numbers are still Red.

Just my opinion of course.

daveyjp

Were new tyres fitted before any of this work was done?  If not it may have been a waste of time.  I've had problems with pulling and camber sensitivity when tyres are worn/mismatched and new tyres solved the issue.

kiss_my_face

daveyjp said:

Were new tyres fitted before any of this work was done?  If not it may have been a waste of time.  I've had problems with pulling and camber sensitivity when tyres are worn/mismatched and new tyres solved the issue.

Here's another thing. The car had 2 new front tyres fitted by their service centre. The back ones were already nearly new so they didn't change those. Then, just before I picked it up, one of the back tyres had a flat so they changed it.
I don't know if the alignment was done after the front 2 were done or not - I suspect so. 

Mildly_Miffed

kiss_my_face said:

daveyjp said:

Were new tyres fitted before any of this work was done?  If not it may have been a waste of time.  I've had problems with pulling and camber sensitivity when tyres are worn/mismatched and new tyres solved the issue.

Here's another thing. The car had 2 new front tyres fitted by their service centre. The back ones were already nearly new so they didn't change those. Then, just before I picked it up, one of the back tyres had a flat so they changed it.
I don't know if the alignment was done after the front 2 were done or not - I suspect so. 

New tyres won't affect the readings from the laser four-wheel tracking machine, but they might affect how it drives on the road (but not for long, because they'll quickly "wear in")

The rear toe is the reason for it pulling left - the back end is trying to steer right.

kiss_my_face

Mildly_Miffed said:

kiss_my_face said:

daveyjp said:

Were new tyres fitted before any of this work was done?  If not it may have been a waste of time.  I've had problems with pulling and camber sensitivity when tyres are worn/mismatched and new tyres solved the issue.

Here's another thing. The car had 2 new front tyres fitted by their service centre. The back ones were already nearly new so they didn't change those. Then, just before I picked it up, one of the back tyres had a flat so they changed it.
I don't know if the alignment was done after the front 2 were done or not - I suspect so. 

New tyres won't affect the readings from the laser four-wheel tracking machine, but they might affect how it drives on the road (but not for long, because they'll quickly "wear in")

The rear toe is the reason for it pulling left - the back end is trying to steer right.

Thanks so much (and for your earlier detailed reply). I'll get back to the dealership and discuss next steps. No doubt I'll be back with more questions!! 

Mildly_Miffed

I should have added...

While that doesn't show the range of acceptable values, it does show (via the white bar on the red-green-red) where the reading is relative to acceptable.

The only one that's further than the margins is rear right toe, and that's the one that's taking your overall rear toe to the right.

Goudy

It is pulling or is the steering wheel just off centre so it looks like it's steering to the left?

If the steering wheel has been off in the past, it might not have gone back on straight.
If it's out by one spline it'll kink the steering wheel over so to go straight ahead the steering wheel needs to be left slightly, but it'll go straight ahead like this if you loosen your grip of the steering wheel slightly.

To tell if it's pulling to the left is a lot harder, but generally if you loosen your grip on the steering wheel slightly, the car will pull and continue to steer itself left.

You really need a flat road like a car park as most roads and streets tend to be cambered, they have crown in the middle so water runs off to the side, so a car will tend to drift left naturally due to the camber of the road anyway.
(some cars will even have alignment setting to compensate for this, effectively steering the car up the camber ever so slightly)

The front alignment is adjustable on all cars but the rear alignment is usually set with no adjustment unless it's a high end sports car. Your average hatchback won't be easily adjustable without some extra parts that it really shouldn't need.

This tend to mean there are other issues with the rear end if the rear alignment is out.
It could have some bushes or other parts are worn and it's not unheard of for the rear beam axle to bend if some numpty jacked it up there or it's took a knock in the past.
I've even seen buckled wheels throw an alignment check out.

I once bought a used car that had terrible steering problems.
Turned out the rack have been off and refitted unevenly (more rack one side than the other), then someone tried to track the car up straight via the track rod ends.
With a used car you just never know.

kiss_my_face

Thanks for the reply.
It's hard to describe. The steering wheel is definitely off centre - it's natural resting position is slightly to the left (11 o'clock). What's really noticeable is when taking the third exit on a roundabout. Once off the exit, the steering wheel turns through my hands and, I expect it to rest in the centre, but it then sits in that left position. So I then have to adjust it to the right/centre to keep me going straight. 
I've had limited motorway driving in this car, but it's less noticeable as you kind of get in a set position. 

facade

It needs the front wheels aligning with the steering wheel set to centre, and then the steering angle sensor reset.

In The Olden Days, the steering geometry used to pull the wheels straight, now cars have this electric power steering there isn't enough self-centring action to do it, so the car uses the angle of the steering wheel, and continually motors the steering so as to straighten it. 

If some highly trained technician has just adjusted one track rod, straight ahead is now a few degrees off centre, so you have to continually apply pressure to the wheel to fight the car trying to set it to what it thinks is straight.

Some cars will eventually take the hint and re-learn the straight ahead position if you drive in a straight line long enough, which is why I suggest getting it right first, and then resetting the angle sensor to clear any self-learning.

I wouldn't trust the 4 wheel alignment report (the rears don't adjust and measurement to measurement is only just around 10% difference, when they ought to be the same), the suspension needs to be correctly loaded to reference values to do the measurements, and although I wasn't there to see I doubt if it was.....

The acid test for rear toe-in is to see if it is knocking the outer edges off the rear tyres, if it is, there is too much rear toe-in.