Hey guys been noticing that my Cooper sways slightly to the right when I let go of the steering wheel. Not sure if this is a total alignment problem because I just got the car aligned right after I got springs. This was also happening prior to the installation of the springs. Any ideas on what this could be?

 

one of 2 reasons probably:
1. factory spec alignment lets the car drift to the right slightly. i forgot the main reason why, but probably in case driver is not paying attention or falling asleep, the car would drift to the shoulder and not into oncoming traffic... not sure why it does this, but practically all production cars with factory alignment specs do this...

2. the crown in the road.

 

You sure about #1? None of my cars track right.

I think its the crown of the road.

 

So it's nothing to worry about in other words???

 

positive. its very very slight. 18 minutes of toe with 5 minutes difference according to TIS.

my e46m3 did it. my e39m5 did it. my f150 did it. etc. several of my friends cars do it too. when i did my alignments, i checked the factory settings and found the left front had 1/32 inch more toe then the right...

 

Cool....Thanks. Just had to make sure.

 

how's your tire wear? if its even, then its a personal perference. you can leave it if there is no wear problems.

you can have it fixed. i never did like factory alignments anyways...

the guys with porsche gt3's hate, and i mean with a passion, hate the factory alignments.... soooo much understeer...

 

Well, so far it's been alright. I just got the tire about a month ago and the springs about two weeks ago. I'm gonna give it about another month and see how it is then. The camber is at -2.5 right now, so it's out there. If in a month the wear is pretty bad, I will probably get rear control arms installed and maybe a sway bar at the same time!

 

Panganiban, I put a sway bar on mine, it's perfect now. No extra wear noticed on my tires yet either. take care

 

Hey James, yeah I'm trying to scrounge up enough money to get that sway bar also. Hopefully within the month, I'll be able to get it. Wanna do a bunch of exterior mods also, but it's looking like mucho dinero so its gonna be tough.

 

Interesting, will check this out when I pull out my MCS again later on
this week. Thanks. :smile: