Ok, so my car went threw quite an extensive build over the past year.. but basically I took it in for an alignment after putting KW V3 suspension on (previously my car was "Stanced" on teins and was aligned with 0 issues, other than camber) and the car is back at basically stock height, maybe 1" lower all the way around - My front subframe was removed when I pulled the motor/tranny/tcase but other than that nothing has been touched.. after talking to the guy my toe is soo far off in the front he said my tie rods would need to be 2+" longer for him to get the car back in spec.. I am so confused..


My coilovers have fully adjustable top hats, would any adjustment affect the toe?


According to the sheet, front driver side is +5.88 and passenger side is -6.18


Next question... does one side being + and other side being - cancel eachother out? Meaning the passenger side is actually only out -.3? The car doesn't drive bad or shake.... at all..


It just sucks because Toe is really all I'm worried about as i have a race this Friday and am not interested in all my tires pointing in a different direction.. lol

 

Better responses if you post up in the Motorsports thread

 

Not a alignment expert , but I have been using my camber gauge and toe plates to do alignments myself in the past few months.
If +means toe in, -means toe out, than, yes, it should cancel out each other and you get -0.3 of total toe. You steering wheel probably won't point straight.
But a little total toe out is probably what you want for road racing anyway.
Do you have a set of toe plates for a quick measure?
I personally believe no car is un-alignable.. But then again, I am just a garage diyer that only works on my own car.

 

Ok, so a rather pathetic update, but I appreciate your responses!!

Here it goes... I took off work to start tearing my car apart and find this "issue". As I'm working on it and adjusting some thing I think of how far off 6+ degreees actually is.. and I have this wild idea that the guy that was working on my car might have straightened out my steering wheel and tried to make the wheels straight again via the toe..

Side Note: My steering wheel is a full half turn off, due to me putting the subframe back in the car alone.. on a garage floor

Now I told them that my steering wheel was not straight, and to please ignore it.

So I decide to drive down and talk to the "mechanic" (?), and I just straight asked him if he tried to align the steering wheel and wheels together via the toe, and he thought for a minute or two.. gave me a few blank stares, and eventually said yes.

Long story short...... don't go too Tires Plus for an alignment

Once again, thanks for the replies.... I am not usually this dumb lol

 

Lmao... Glad you figured it out, dude.

 

I was about to say, I bet you don't have the wheel "aligned" to the rack correctly. Its a poor design on Mitsubishi's part that the input splines on the rack and the column aren't "keyed", and can go together with the wheel in the wrong position. Glad you figured it out.

 

Getting the steering wheel straight is part of a normal alignment. To most people it is so important that they get angry if they get the car back from alignment with anything but a straight wheel. So, you were really going against the current here.

I had my dash apart and steering column out and when reassembled I had the same problem. However, I was only about a spline off and being lazy and also able to do DIY alignment I just adjusted the toe. LOL, sometimes the smartest guy in the shop is not the alignment guy.