mishar

This is from ELSA:

Front
Camber - 1° ± 0.4°
Maximum permissible difference between both sides 0.5°
Toe + 0.13° ± 0.07°

Rear
Camber - 1.25° ± 0.3°
Maximum permissible difference between both sides 0.3°
Toe + 0.2° ± 0.1°

This are your values:

Front
Toe L+0,33° R+0,45°
Total Toe 0,78°
Camber L-0,93° R-0,78°
Camber Difference -0,15°

Rear
Toe L-0,11° R+0,05° (value sign might be switched depending on the equipment manufacturer)
Total toe -0,06°
Camber L-1,37° R-0,91°
Camber Diff -0,45°

This are your words:

I do a test drive, bam, wheel is misaligned again, I go back up on the platform, bad toe rear right and left front.

So, ordered a new suspension, changed. Nothing.

From all this my logic (and that's all we can get online) is that something is wrong with your right rear suspension. Either some bushing or something loose. One side has positive and the other negative toe angle. That causes pulling. Besides that your front toe angles are a bit high, but that won't cause problem you have.

There is another cause for pulling. If your steering rack is not centered (and it might not be after all that alignment) there can be slight hydraulic support difference turning your steering wheel to the center position. This is quite inaccessible to adjust.

SnakeSK

Will check the rear suspension, are there any control arms similiar to the front? Can I check it using the prying arm? Or is there any special procedure?

mishar

There are few bushings similar to those in the front. Also check my previous post.

volvopentaman

Just my opinion about those camber and toe-in values as a mechanic. Your values differ a bit from factory values, but they certainly don't cause the steering wheel to pop around like that. You said in a post that it was suddenly 10-15º misaligned and again after correction and alignment 1-2º misaligned.

Your toe in is quite big, like 2-3 times the allowed, so that counts for quite a lot of tire wear. That one is easy to fix even By yourself, with a tape measure and two wrenches. But first you need to find which ball-joint or bushings are bad. I'm 100% sure you have some bad joints or bushings.

To identify bad joints, lift the car off the wheels (remember jacking mode from MMI), and take a firm grip of the wheel when it's in the air with both hands. One test vertically (hands front and backside of wheel) and one horizontal test (up and down sides of wheel). If you find any play, especially at front, you have bad ball joints 100% sure. Then identify bad joints By having a friend poking around the wheel, vertically and horizontally again, and you putting your hand on one joint at a time (so that a part of your hand touches each side of the joint to feel movement). Even 0,2mm / 1/8" of movement is a bad joint. I've seen 50km driven bad joints, so don't count on them being good, even if replaced recently!

I do this checkup on my cars frequently, and this is done at MOT inspections too, along with checking the bushings.

Also check that all nuts and bolts for the bushings are tight and sitting properly. I've seen a whole bunch of bad installations over the years.

Rear suspension can be totally whacked, without it almost at all affecting the steering wheel position. I've had a couple cars with litterarly nothing left of bushings at the rear, but still going straight, especially FWD cars. On one really powerful car (450hp/700Nm) there was a slight misalignment of the steering wheel under full throttle at low gears, due to the fact that the passenger side rear leaf spring body support was cracked loose from the weldings.

So I'd put my energy on the front bushings, AND of course i hope that you have checked normal stuff, as all the 6 ball joints per side at the front (one for each control arm = 4) and the tie rod ends, one inner and one outer). Ball joints can pop around, causing the steering wheel to be at random positions, especially on FWD/4WD cars with powerful engines, such as ours.

mishar

This is not true. OP's toe angles, one positive and one negative, makes both rear wheels pull to the same side "overtaking" the front, so he has to correct by steering wheel. His car actually goes a bit sideways.

All angles are off. I can't imagine what kind of alignment that was.

By the way, OP stated that he replaced front suspension. What to check on a brand new suspension?

SnakeSK

I´ve been through the two sets of front suspensions (first Meyle HD and then Lemforder (OEM)), however, only one set of steering rods, if I remember correctly, when we changed the steering rods, we couldn´t set the steering correctly anymore, the question is, why is steering centered in Automatic, and the left wheel toes out on dynamic. Nothing has been changed on rear suspension yet, my mechanic was checking it, and there was no mentioned play, guess we have to take it apart. I´m planning on checking out the rear, rear sensors, swap the steering rods if one isn´t somehow bad, swap the air struts if they aren´t bent, and we´ll see.

So far I´ve found these components for rear suspension:

Trackrod (2x) 4E0501529G
Coupling rods 4E0 505 548 L / 4E0 505 547 L
Coupling rod for stabilizer (2x) 4E0505465G

These looks like a critical components that hold the rear suspension togegher along with bolts and excentric bolts.

volvopentaman

Yes, OP has defineatly his rear toe angles wrong, and on the same direction too, both are VERY SLIGHTLY towards the same direction. Those angles are 0,11º and 0,05º so next to nothing, compared to the 1-2º and 10-15º the steering wheel had to be turned, for the car to go straight.

If the rear toe angles are what the OP wrote: 0,11º and 0,05º, this translates to exactly same numbers that the steering wheel needs to be turned, or better to say, the avarage of those two = 0,11+0,05/2 = 0,08º. That angle is defineatly something entirely else than what the OP says his steering wheel needs to be turned for the car to go straight.

Of course the fact that the OP's front angles are off too, affect the turning of the steering wheel.

But my point is, check ALL ball-joints and bushings too. Don't start ordering stuff and replacing By random.

You can very easily check out all bushings and ball joints By hand and visual examination. This will save you a ton of money, i promise!

People rely too much on readings from those stupid "digital" alignment machines. Yes, they measure EXTREMELY accurate angles, BUT they measure with higher accuracy than the bushings in an old used car can stand up to (and even new car bushings etc). If you measure, then wiggle around with the wheels just By hand, or even turn the steering wheel around a bit etc, you will have different measurements again.

I guarantee that if you take 10 measurements, none of them will probably be exactly the same. I've played around with these machines, and concluded that common sense, a tape-measure, a level floor and a water-level are the best things you can use to measure. Not as accurate as the digital measurements with laser and stuff, but enough accurate.

Mechanics that rely entirely on the measurements on these digital devices are S T U P I D. Use your common sense now please and don't rely on accurate machines measuring inaccurate and worn out car parts!

If it's specified for toe to be + 0.13° ± 0.07° and it is Toe L+0,33° R+0,45°. YES, the difference is in numbers 2-3 times, BUT don't look on that, instead look at the angles. One revolution is 360º, a front car tyre can turn on a normal car between 60-80º when you turn the steering lock to lock. So out of this 60-80º the toe in is just a drop in the ocean, you see?

I've had cars that go straight with toe in differences of nearly 1º at the front, and near 4º at the rear. Yes, they eat a lot of rubber, but they go straight, and don't have the steering wheel 10-15º off center.

I've seen people put thousands of euros on fixin non-existing issues with squeaking bushings, steering wheels that are off center, by replacing perfectly good parts at random, and not getting the problem fixed, just because their mechanic had a "superb" alignment device, that he couldn't use.

SnakeSK: The trackrods are in deed important components, or more to say their bushings, tough those trackrod bushings don't have too much rubber or cavities in them to crack or get loose. The coupling rods are for the swaybar, they will not effect your wheel geomentry in any way.

The coupling rods with different numbers for left and right could affect your wheel geometry, but the bushings will have to be totally destroyed. In the rear I'd put my money on the lower-link bushings, because they are big and take a lot of beating (same as the rear lower link bushings in the front axle). The lower link bushings are the typical ones to replace on most cars with fairly high mileage.

The parts that affect your wheel geometry in the front are:
-All the parts need to be straight and in good condition
-Bushings (5pc/&side) and ball joints (6pc per side) in the front need to be OK
-All bolts need to be fastened correctly

In the rear:
-Bushings (3pc) on the lower link
-Rear track rod bushings 2pc (the one you put the spare part number on)
-Upper track rod bushings (3pc, one for the subframe, one for the air-strut and one for the wheel hub)

And as I said, first things first, check what parts in your suspension are bad, i suspect your biggest problems are the ball joints in the front, and maybe some of the bushings.

And also check all your bolts are fastened correctly. I've seen even NEW cars (under 10km on the clock) that have loose subframe bolts etc, and I've as said seen sloppy mechanics that forget to tighten suspension bolts.

SnakeSK

So been to the dealership, they found nothing wrong with the suspension, did the alignment, and now the car has the steering wheel to the left, they advised changing the tyres, did that, been there second time, no change, just a little toe fix

front is first, there is caster (L/R) initial value, specified and set value
then the camber, toe (L/R/total)

Rear end is the second, camber, toe and I think thrust angle?

richard-tx

If it were me, I would consider a road trip to Germany and have a real Audi tech look at it. It is only a 10 hr trip.