churchie1975

Initial VW, Indie1 and Indie2 measurements... Some common, some not. How can three alignement machines vary so much?

Tony - off-side ... I mean near-side (left). Good catch! I'll post the alignments when I get a spare five mins.

I have a new 66 Golf R. Since the first 100 miles it was apparent it wanted to drift towards the off-side. To cut a very long story short, I had the tracking/alignment checked by two independents and a main dealer before any adjustments were made. All three measured different angles for caster, camber and toe. The two independents used Hunter machines (one used degrees/minutes, the other degrees/decimals - but even when converted to minutes they still differed), the VW dealer used a Beissbarth VAS 6767. In each case the vehicle had a full tank of fuel and tyre pressures were all set to the recommended value. In all three cases one or more of the angles were out of spec. I’ll post “before†print outs tomorrow. Question 1: Which set of results should I believe? The VW dealer refused to make any adjustments, so I had one of the independent adjust rear and front toe. (Again printout to follow). Now the car very much follows the crown of the road. I have have proven this on a long stretch of road where one can drive safely a considerable distance one side in either direction; the car drifts to the low side and always requires a subtle correction with the steering in the opposite direction. When running down the centre of the road the car does not pull to either side (as expected). So I’d describe the car as crown sensitive. Question 2: What characteristic of the chassis determines how sensitive a car is to road crown? Tyres, toe, caster, camber, … Question 3: Can this characteristic be dialled out by modifying the toe (or other parameters, pressures)? To me the Golf R is more sensitive than my Porsche 996, and the other thing is the Golf “benefits†from EPS (rather than hydraulic PS) which mean the Golf has road camber compensation built into the software i.e. it exerts some counter force on the rack to assist one when driving along a cambered road. Whatever next, personally I find this a totally unnecessary “improvementâ€. Help/explanations/insight appreciated.