Hi new member here
I originally posted this as a question on the Talkford site but Rich doesn't drop in too much now and I figured I'd get a quicker and better answer here.
Original thread: http://www.talkford.com/topic/221203-front-toe-has-changed-after-replacing-top-mount/
My car is a Ford Mondeo ST24. It is running on the original 16" alloy wheels with 205/50/R16 Uniroyal Rainsport 2 tyres all round. The suspension has been changed so it's running on Eibach Pro springs all round. All shocks were changed for Bilstein/Slachs parts and are good. It has standard wishbones with good bushes and ball joints. The front droplinks are thicker ST200 style parts, and the ARBs are polybushed front and rear.
Back in late 2011 I had a full geometry done at my local Ford dealer on a John Bean machine, which cost about £60. This was after changing both the front wishbones and wheel bearings. Here is the print out:
The only adjustable suspension angles on this car are front and rear toe, the camber and castor are both non-adjustable without modified parts.
The has been handling is excellent, especially for such heavy saloon car and I am very happy with it. However a few weeks back I noticed that the handling was becoming a bit odd when the NSF was going over bumps, I got some odd bumpsteer and it just generally didn't feel right. There was some knocking too, but I had an advisory at my last MOT for the droplink balljoints. I changed this and it cured some of the noise, it didn't change the bad handling (and I didn't expect it too).
I got my pry bar in and around the NSF strut/wishbone and could find no play, however I whipped the strut top nut off and the problem was immediately visible - the second nut (which sits right on top of the top mount, and for some reason isn't a nyloc) had loosened allowing the thread part of the strut piston to move excessively. This in turn had worn the centre hole of the top mount to about twice it's normal size! This was of course allowing massive movement and would have been playing havoc with the geometry.
So I ordered a new top mount and replaced it. As I guessed, the toe has been changed presumably due to different manufacturing tolerances in the top mount dimensions as well as wear. The steering wheel now needs to be held slightly to the left to go straight, but you can actually 'feel' that the handling isn't right still.
So my questions are:
1) Now that the steering wheel needs to be held left, does this mean that my suspension changes have made the NSF toe in?
2) The car has not done many miles since the last geometry and I am happy the other three wheel toe settings are good. Would it be permissable for me to make small gradual adjustments to the NSF track rod until I get a centred steering wheel again? I figure once the steering is straight then the front total toe must be back to zero again (as in the geo print out)?
Thanks for any help, I could do without spending another £60+ on a full alignment again if I could fix it myself quickly and cheaply