Self Centering - lack of
 

Wotcha peeps. Just driven my car round the roundabout at the back of my house. I was somewhat surprised to find that it has no self centering action whatsoever:eek: I have eccentric mushrooms with the offset hole towards the front, the suspension brackets are all in the correct place, everything seems to be nice and free but the steering wheel stays wherever I put it. What other things can effect the self centering? I thought it was mainly down to the caster angle set by the offset mushroom. I notice that my rack is quite low and so the track arms are at a fairly steep upwards angle - would this be anything to do with it.
All thoughts accepted gratefully.
Enoch

Can you post up pictures? This way any errors should be easier to spot.

Kind regards

John

Could well be.
I had mine set almost at the top of the brackets.
Also tracking can affect self centering

rack needs to go up 3/4 of the way to the top and a bit of toe out will sort it.

Thanks guys. My wheels are set to about 3 degrees of toe in at the moment so maybe I need to try some toe out. I think the tyres had too much air in them as well - 29PSI, now reduced to 20. I haven't tried it again yet but will see tomorrow if it's any better or not. I think the rack could do with more height, I reckon I will get bump steer as it is. I could maybe do with another inch of ride height though so may extend my shocks before messing about with the rack. That will have the same effect on the angle of the track rods.
Enoch.

Mine was the same when i first drove it, it will never self centre like a normal production car at low speeds but if set up correctly it will self centre

As ash said toe out really helps and for iva i had my front tyres at 30psi as this seemed to help also

I tried it again today with enough toe out to scrub the tires in about 1000 miles:D It is much better now but I don't think it will have much straight line stability. I found a few references on t'internet that seem to suggest that the IVA inspectors need to see some self centering effort but don't necessarily expect them to go right back to centre. Anyone got any comments on this point? If I turn about 1/4 lock it will more or less stay there, it will virtually centre from full lock. I might try more air pressure to see what happens.
Enoch.

That's my understanding too, as long as it tries to move towards centre that will do it.

We had exactly the same problem at IVA a couple of months back.
Pumping the tyres up to 30psi and some toe out solved it for IVA , now looking at all wheel settings for better handling

Hi Snapper, which test center did you use? Did they expect it to centre all teh way or just show some centering effort?
Enoch