Alignment questions

[randatola]

Long time lurker, first time poster here...

I have a LS V8 Sport. During our last snowstorm here, I smacked the front passenger wheel into a curb pretty hard. Scraped the rim up and assuming there used to be a balance weight on there, that got knocked off too. The car didn't feel right after that- some pulsation in that wheel at speed, and it just generally felt a little flighty on bumpy surfaces. I had the dealership look at it and they found nothing wrong.

A couple thousand miles later, there is obvious uneven wear on that tire. The outside edge is completely worn down through the entire tread, with <5000 miles on these tires. I take it into a tire place to replace the now-unsafe tire and have an alignment done.

They tell me they fixed the toe on the front end, but there are other issues they can't fix and I should take it to a body shop. They gave me a printout of the camber, caster and toe post-alignment:

Camber L -.22deg, R +.71deg
Cross Camber -.93deg
Caster L 8.09deg, R 6.72deg
Cross Caster 1.37deg
Toe L .17deg, R .11deg
Total toe .27deg

I'm assuming the postive camber is at least partly responsible for the wear issue. Anyway, my questions are:
1. How do I get this fixed.
2. What are the expected numbers for camber, caster and toe? (My car is all stock)

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

[LincolnTech38]

something is bent.

Right front Camber and Caster are seriously out of wack.

It is impossible to know what is wrong without looking at the car but my first guess would be a bent hub/knuckle/strut possibly control arm. You can buy a camber/caster kit and have it installed at the dealer, the kit consists of new lower control arm front and rear bolts with eccentrics to adjust camber and caster, wich is not adjustable from the factory.

I still think something has to be bent but you can try that first and see if they can get the alignment any better.

Its really hard to pick out one part with curb hits unless its visibally bent.

Also looking at your specs your car must pull hard to the right.

Jay

 

[randatola]

Thanks for the advice. I finally got the car to the dealer-- overheating / hydraulic cooling fan kind of forced the issue. Anyway, they looked at the wheel too and they are going to do the camber kit while the car is there.

OT: My loaner car is an F-150 FX4 with 400 miles. Handles a little different from the LS but has better legroom for me.

 

[Midas78]

Please post the results, I have almost the same issue. Thanks.

 

[2001LS8Sport]

Did they measure the wheel base from side to side and see if there was any difference? Any offset of the right front wheel assy that's different than the left? With the equipment they have now days, I would think it's possible to take a few measurements and have a good handle on whether or not something is bent. If so...I would want that fixed before I aligned it.