Steering wheel woes

[walela1]

Anyone experience a steering wheel which has been horizontal while the car was going straight down a lane, deviating and being off horizontal in order to keep the car going straight?

If the car is parked and the steering wheel is left horizontal, the wheels are turned about 10 degrees left, which has not been the case with my nearly three years with my '04 Black MM.

Can something have loosened up subsequent to my having the front end aligned to Carfixers specs last month? I only noticed this this morning on the freeway on the way in to work, but the alignment was done about three weeks ago.

How does the steering wheel get adjusted to be neutral again with the wheels pointing straight ahead?

Best,
Walela:help:

[JMan]

It may be that something wasn't tight and slipped altering the alignment. You should get back to your alignment place as soon as possible and have them inspect it. This happened to a member at MVIV and he had it checked and corrected locally in Kissimmee.

Best luck,

J

[cyclopsram]

You need to have it inspected pronto... Centering steering wheel is part of any good alignment...and if it has moved, one of the control arms may be loose on its bolts...or a tie rod end clamp was not properly tightened and has slipped... or maybe just that you did not notice, and everything is tight but in the wrong geometry...

[Raudermaster]

LOL this reminds me of me and my friend in his '95 1500. We went off roading and something got caught on his front axle that wouldn't allow us to leave, and we just had to keep rocking it back and forth to get it out. When we did, it yanked the wheel to the left, but kept the wheels straight. So the steering wheel was positioned vertical when the truck would be straight. I forget how he fixed it, but I definately think you should get it aligned.

[Loco1234]

The steering wheel should be kept perfectly straight during alignment or else it will get aligned to an offcenter position.

[Stranger in the Black Sedan]

These cars seem to be very sensitive to caster settings -- if I have more than 2 degrees cross caster (more caster on the pass side), I get a noticeable caster pull. Depending on the road crown it will affect steering center. How close did your shop get the caster to the recommended 3 deg split? If it is a lot more than this it is going to probably go straight on a crowned road, w the wheel centered, but leave the wheel noticeably off center as you steer against the caster pull on a more level road. Also a lot of alignment shops do not use a torque wrench on the camber bolts. These cars have a very high spec for those bolts (almost 170 ft lbs). The first alignment I had done, the guy hand tightened that bolt and it slipped soon after and shot the alignment all to hell. Something else to check. Request they use a torque wrench this time if that is the case, and give them the specs.