I've recently bought a 2nd hand octavia 2 FL estate and I'm planning to get vredestein quatrac lite tyres fitted, and a 4-wheel Hunter alignment.

 

Can someone say what can be adjusted on this car, front and back?

 

Thanks

Front the toe in/out can be adjusted, camber can be balanced side to side by moving the subframe.

Rear toe in/out and camber can be adjusted.

Thanks - I couldn't find the exact info from searching.

Only the Castor cannot be altered.

What is the Castor please?

Castor

 

 

Caster Angle

The Caster angle is the ability of the front suspension system to self center under cornering loads. Too much caster and the front of the car will understeer more ( positive caster), too little and you will get oversteer handling characteristics (negative caster).

Improper adjustment will result in steering inputs required both into and out of a corners, resulting in a car which is difficult to keep on a straight line.  A large positive camber setting (wheel facing forward of axis) is good for high speed stability but can make it more difficult for turning the steering, excessive amounts will increase tyre/tire wear.

What is the Castor please?

Think of the front wheels on a shopping trolley - the difference between the centre of the wheel and the pivot point for the steering.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

This is a fantastic website that tells you all about setting up your cars suspension and explaining why, it also goes in to other things in depth, well worth a read.

 

 Rapid Racer

^^ Nice read James ^^

 

 

Thanks for the link 

 

Castor

 

 

Caster Angle

The Caster angle is the ability of the front suspension system to self center under cornering loads. Too much caster and the front of the car will understeer more ( positive caster), too little and you will get oversteer handling characteristics (negative caster).

Improper adjustment will result in steering inputs required both into and out of a corners, resulting in a car which is difficult to keep on a straight line.  A large positive camber setting (wheel facing forward of axis) is good for high speed stability but can make it more difficult for turning the steering, excessive amounts will increase tyre/tire wear.

 

.

A rather misleading illustration unfortunately, which misses the essential point.  "Rapid-Racer.com" (wheoever they are) should be ashamed of themselves.

(1) If the various dotted lines were shown passing through the wheel centre rather than through the "contact point" (the point where the tyre touches the ground), you would be able to see that if you have positive castor, the contact point will lie behind the "swivel axis" (the axis which the wheels swivel around when steering) so that, when moving forward, the wheels tend to be pulled backwards into the "straight ahead" position, making the car want to "straighten up".

The greater the amount of positive castor (i.e., the greater the angle is from vertical) , the stronger this "go-straight-on" effect.  If the castor angle were reduced - made more vertical - this effect would decrease; the car would be more responsive but also less stable and more "twitchy" - very tiring to drive.

(2) Cars never have "negative" castor (with the swivel axis tilted the other way).  Doing that would put the contact point ahead of the swivel axis, and as soon as you moved forward the wheel would immediately want to steer sharply to the rght or left, making the car impossible to drive.

A tea trolley is similar but achieves the same effect in a different way.  Be cause a trolley might need to be pushed in any direction at all, the swivel axis cannot be angled and has to be vertical.  So the contact point of the wheel is kept to one side of the swivel axis by offsetting the whole wheel, often by using curved arms.  As soon as the trolley is moved in any direction, the wheel is dragged behind the vertical swivel axis by its contact point and it simply follows the direction the trolley is being pushed.

Supermarket trolleys are often a pain to push in a straight line because (as you will see if you look) one - or more - legs of the trolley has become bent at the bottom and the swivel axis is therfore no longer vertical, thus biasing the direction the wheel will try to swivel to.

(Hope all this hasn't led to the complete confusion of non-technical readers!)

Front the toe in/out can be adjusted, camber can be balanced side to side by moving the subframe.

Rear toe in/out and camber can be adjusted.

 

Rather than starting a new topic to add to the many already there, can I ask how the rear camber is adjusted?

 

I recently had a 4-wheel alignment done at a F1 Autocentre as I have got excessive wear and saw-toothing on the near-side rear of my Octavia II 2005 Estate.  The technician adjusted the toe front and back, but told me that the rear camber could not be adjusted because there was no oval washer as there is for adjusting the toe, and it is likely that the bush has deteriorated and will need to be replaced in order to get the camber back to the correct angle (it's at -2 deg 19 secs, with the off-side at -1 deg 40 secs).  He seemed to know what he was talking about, but reading this I'm not so sure.  Can it be adjusted without replacing the bushes?

 

It also seemed odd that they did not have the Octavia II Estate with standard suspension on their computer, so we had to guess which was the correct settings to use. Another thing which I was not convinced by was that the technician also told me that they almost always set the left-rear camber on all cars (that they can adjust) to -1 deg 30 secs, and the right-rear to -1 deg 0 secs, the difference being because of the additional camber on the edge of British roads. Does this sound right? What about motorways, etc? They're not going to have that additional camber.

 

Any advice gratefully received!

 

Thanks.

Something is wrong if they don't have the settings on there system for a mk2 Octy!

See this thread for rear camber

http://forums.vwvortex.com/showthread.php?4442430-How-to-adjust-rear-camber/page2

And Grizzles pics in his first post for specs

http://www.briskoda.net/forums/topic/206866-wheel-alignment/

Thanks. Just to confirm, it's the bolt roughly in the middle of this picture (taken this morning)?  I think a return visit is required...

 

http://i934.photobucket.com/albums/ad190/peter-c1/20131202_093545_zpsb9c32b6f.jpg

Edited 2 December, 201312 yr by Peter.C

Yep

Thanks for pic Peter C for the pic - i'd better get some WD40 onto those bolts on mine in prep for alingnment :-)

Thanks guys.  I have now also managed to get hold of the relevant pages from the workshop manual (see below - I hope it's ok to post this?).

 

Took this info into F1 Autocentre and explained. They put it on the ramp and had a look - obviously it wasn't in a place they'd seen before, and they said they'd have fun getting to it!  They said they'd probably need to allow at least an hour to do the full realignment, so going back on Saturday.  Hopefully it will get done properly this time!

 

 

 

 

Edited 3 December, 201312 yr by Peter.C

hi to all,

 

had my 4-wheel alignment checked today and the mechanic told me that my caster if off. As he showed me the edge of my rim on my front left wheel is 61 cm away from the edge of the front door. On the right side it is 0,5 cm less, 60,5 cm. The car has not been crashed or hit ever, rim OK. Can I adjust this and how big of a problem this is for the suspention? What could cause it?

 

thanks

 

car is 2000 fabia tdi

Edited 23 June, 20169 yr by Nurudin

hi to all,

 

had my 4-wheel alignment checked today and the mechanic told me that my caster if off. As he showed me the edge of my rim on my front left wheel is 61 cm away from the edge of the front door. On the right side it is 0,5 cm less, 60,5 cm. The car has not been crashed or hit ever, rim OK. Can I adjust this and how big of a problem this is for the suspention? What could cause it?

 

thanks

 

car is 2000 fabia tdi

This is the Octavia area.

 

What are the actual caster readings he got?  Does the car drive straight on a flat road?  Are the bushes OK?

Problem solved. The subframe was taken of for a steering rack change and when fitted it had shifted a bit wich reflected on the wheel position. It drove straight, just couldn't live with knowing it was off.

Thanks

Edited 27 June, 20169 yr by Nurudin