Ok so I took my evo 9 to long beach mitsubishi a week ago... they agreed to replace the steering wheel due to the top piece not glued correctly. After they replaced it, they handed me the keys without test driving it (i was in a rush and didn't mind, thinking that i'd rather test drive my own car anyways). That same day i notice the steering wheel is leaning towards the right a little as Im driving straight. When I took it back to them this weekend they said it's the alignment. The alignment was fine when I went in... and I still believe the alignment is fine now... but the service manager insists that the steering wheel can only be fitted one way which is the way they put it in...

My question... are there notches where they can adjust the steering wheel fitment or are they right and it only goes in one way and i must do an alignment?

PS... they are willing to pay for everything but i don't wanna do an alignment if that's not the problem

 

bump... someone had to have changed the steering wheel...

any help out there...... i really hate to do the alignment... even if the dealer is paying for it

 

That's totally wrong. The steering wheel can be placed anywhere you want it. The notches it fits into are only about 5 degrees apart.

You need a long 8mm allen socket to take it off. It's actually rather simple.

I can't believe they think it only goes on one way.

 

Yeah - if they didn't touch the alignment then they put it on the spline incorrectly.

The thing that's troubling is that there is a module (Airbag) that fits in a certain way making it almost impossible to mis-align the wheel with the column, - I think

 

so the dealer was dicking me then.... im so pissed... i cant believe i almost got an alignment....

 

Ok so I talked to the dealer and to clearify any miscommunications and bad mouthing on my part, they wanted to do the alignment to bring it back to spec (free of charge) not to resolve the issue... I was told they had done this before and this is part of the procedure to insure it's not the alignment at fault...

again I can't see how replacing a steering wheel can cause an alignment issue....

anyone want to clarify this for me?

 

if it's off, they'll just correct the toe to make it straight, it's not a super big deal.

they just screwed up and put it on the spline one notch off. they probably had the wheel turned one way or the other, pulled it off, forgot it was turned, and put it on straight.

 

how about taking it in to a different dealer. probably the service advisor or the person involved don't know what his doing. Just my opinion.

 

Pepsi is right - it's not a big deal.

However, It's very hard to mis-align the splines because of that jct/relay box at the lower right portion of the column.

My wheel is off because the wheel wasn't perfectly straight when my alignment was done - I won't be correcting it until my next alignment.

 

it's not that big of a deal now.... but when it comes to the alignment again at a different place, they gonna be like what the hell i zeroed it in and the wheels off... in other words all mitsu gotta do is test drive take wheel off move it to the left a lil and they are done... instead they are making me run around (they don't have alignment machine)


the car only has 6000 miles... i'll be damn if the alignment is off...

 

well, in all honesty, the time it's taken to post this up, etc, you could have fixed it yourself.

However, the first thing to do when doing an alignment is set the wheel straight. From there, they adjust toe, camber, etc.

Finally, if you're still driving on the stock alignment, it's off. I guarantee it. while the toe was correct, i had 0 camber on the driver front on a brand new car, and -1.2 on the passenger side.

The stock alignment is not perfect by any means. Unless the dealer gets it requested, why are they gonna pull a new car in and put it on the alignment rack? it's new, it should be right. (but it's not.)

 

Factory alignments are ALL off, or do you think it's limited to you're car???

 

+1

 

As usual the dealer knows jack. The wheel like everyone else said has splines that can be adjusted simply by pulling it off and using the next notch. They simply werent exact when they re-installed it. Im surprised they didnt try to convince you to install new brakes b/c of the problem. Not all EVO owners are 19 year old kids that mommy and daddy bought the car for. These dealers should pay for their bull****.

 

^^^^ can somebody verify this?