I had my focus turbo on a 4 wheel laser machine today as I had a bit of wear on the inside passenger tyre. In the last 12 months I've had both rear hubs off to fit the racing puma spacers and the passenger side cv boot replaced, so thought it was best that I did. Oh and the fact you had to hold the steering wheel slightly left to drive straight :shock:
Any way my first diagnosis came up with the following results


I was told the caster on the drivers side isn't adjustable and was out by approximately 2mm the tester thought that the components on that side could be 2mm shorter than the passenger side in total. I was told that it may have even came from the factory like that and it wasn't really worth trying to put it right.
The passenger camber is also none adjustable and again could be down the shock being slightly bent. I'm not sure if this is the case but a few years ago I had one of my Koni dampers replaced under warranty as the drivers side was leaking fluid, so this could be possible not having replaced both items at the same time. Is there anything else that I could check other than replacing both shocks and seeing if that solves the problem?
Here are the results after adjustment



Confirming the 2mm difference that the tester thought it would be out, his guess was bang on. My rear wheels are 3mm wider than the fronts due to having the racing puma 10mm rear hub spacers fitted along with the AP bells and 3mm spacer at the fronts.



The car is a 2 litre zetec turbo, would I have been better off saying it was an st170 for the steering setup seeing as it has the st170 hubs/knuckles fitted both front and rear? I know the steering rack on the st170 is different giving a shorter full lock, just a thought I had earlier.
Any advice is appreciated, the car certainly feels better to drive and the steering wheel is bang on center when driving now.

 

The caster is nothing to worry about and wont cause a problem but the 1 degree extra negative camber on the passanger side front may still cause tyre wear on the inside edge. This can be down to either the shock, hub, lower wishbone or chassis. More than likely to be the shock or lower wishbone.

I used to work at chemix as a wheel alignment technician along with Kev Williams who set your car up. Hes a top bloke and knows hes stuff.

I hope this helps.

Si

 

Yeah Kev was very helpful running through everything with me indetail before he adjusted what he could. He said the caster wasn't anything to worry about. I do want to sort the camber out as it will just annoy me if i fot a new tyre for it to do the same. I was wondering if there was any way of checking what could be out rather than buying a new pair of shocks to find out that's not the cause. Think it would be cheaper to do the lower wishbone first if i change anything.

 

Yes it may be worth while replacing the lower wishbone first and then have the alignment checked.

 

After the setup i bent the track rod hitting a kerb I've changed the track rod and the lower wishbone and now the lower ball joint is catcheing the disc under cornering. I think the shock could be bent do you think the hub is goosed too?

 

It's usually impossible to find out, but I would guess - both. We usually replace parts one by one while on aligment machine, but then we have huge stock of spares and aligment machine in workshop. Otherwise I would advice to change both just to be sure.

 

Well it turns out the patern wishbone is slightly longer so i went with a ford OE one at a cost of 3 times the price Got a replacement hub jsut in case that's bent and a new Koni shock on order. Hoping that solves it all or it's a petrol can and matches time.

 

Don't worry, it's not an Evo with bent rear suspension, when you usually end up replacing 4 suspension arms, bearing carrier, hub and driveshaft....sometimes even the suspension x-member.

It's much cheaper and easier to fix