981 CS Alignment Help - Page 1 - Boxster/Cayman - PistonHeads UK

Afternoon all My 981CS has been pulling to the left so I took it to a local well regarded and recommended local Porsche specialist for an alignment check and adjustments if necessary. The new settings are in the attached photo (apologies for the mis-alignment!!) and I was assured all was well following their subsequent road test of the car. However, upon driving it still pulled on different roads, swapped lanes on a dual carriageway and still needed slight pressure to the right to keep the car straight. I have been assured the settings in the photo are within factory specs but my question is whether they should be more equal ie should the right and left settings be (more) aligned and are these disparities enough to make the car behave in this way? I don't think a brake is binding and everything else appears ok. Would be grateful for some advice. Many thanks

Yeah that alignment isn't great... You have uneven toe in the rear, uneven toe up front, a 20' caster difference (acceptable but not ideal), and the front and rear camber is different side to side. This combination of things will certainly make it feel odd when driving I'd take it somewhere decent and have them do it properly Edited by LennyM1984 on Tuesday 22 June 18:28

That's really sloppy work. Go elsewhere and get it done accurately.

LennyM1984 said: Yeah that alignment isn't great... You have uneven toe in the rear, uneven toe up front, a 20' caster difference (acceptable but not ideal), and the front and rear camber is different side to side. This combination of things will certainly make it feel odd when driving I'd take it somewhere decent and have them do it properly Edited by LennyM1984 on Tuesday 22 June 18:28 Thanks guys. I've taken the car out again tonight to make sure I'm not imagining things and it's just not right. I did question the unequal readings when I was given the print out but was assured they were fine and within tolerances - obviously not the case as it felt wrong within 2 minutes of leaving the workshop. This has surprised me as it conflicts with the professionalism of the staff, the reputation of the business and the wide variety of newish and old Porsches onsite today. They have said I can take it back and they will get it right but how difficult is it to set it up with equal left/right settings?

Does anybody have details of the factory settings and/or copies of alignment for a non-PASM car? Many thanks

The alignment isn't perfect but it's still probably better than 95% of the cars on the road that haven't been for a check up, there is nothing there that's causing it to pull imho. You could jack up the front and adjust the camber at the top mounts a tad as they drive best with a little bit more dialled in. Max you will get is about 1.3. Doing so will adjust your toe so that will need to be looked at again but try it, nothing to lose at this stage. Are you sure it's not just the natural camber in the road to ensure the water runs off? Are the tyres up at 2.3bar cold and are they in good condition? Maybe the steering wheel wasn't completely straight when they adjusted it Edited by testdrive on Saturday 26th June 21:04

How have the tyres been wearing on the previous geo? They may need a bit of scrubbing in to the new geo.

Evening all Thanks for the further replies. It's interesting that some of you think the alignment is poor and others think it's acceptable. The car previously tracked straight but started pulling to the left (my wife swears blind she hasn't hit a pothole!) which is why I took it in. The alignment hasn't fixed the pulling - the tyres are fine and according to the indie which performed the alignment there is nothing visible which would indicate anything otherwise. It pulls to the left on different roads and goes to the right when the steering wheel is held level. My problem is that I don't understand the effect that the differences in the left right settings will have - in my mind they should be more equal than they are. Anyway they're going to take another look and I'll mention the points raised here so hopefully it will get sorted..........

It's not totally s te in the sense that the colours are all green ... but one would expect any good alignment to have identical values on both sides (no question for toe and camber as these are readily adjustable - castor cannot be adjusted easlily). Besides adjusting (so the settings are identical both sides) have all suspension components inspected for damage and wear too. If following inspection and allignment the car still pulls check the tyres. These can look perfectly fine, but still cause pulling. Try swapping tyres side to side .... first the fronts (does this make a difference?) ... then swap fronts back to where they were, and swap the rears (makes a difference?). It the car is set up correctly (equal setting on both sides, no suspension wear and tyres undamaged and correctly inflated), then driving on a straight road with a 'normal' road crown and the car on the left of the centre-line, with the wheel held dead centre, it will drift left (i.e. to the kerb) - this is due to the crown and gravity ... neither of which one can change. Thus to drive straight it will be necessary to steer fractionallly to the right. If you drive along the middle of the road on straight, then the wheel should be dead centre (the effect of of the road crown and gravity is nil). And when crossing to the other side of the centre line (as per an overtake) then it will be necessary to steer fractionally left to maintain a straight line (due to the road crown).

Swapping lanes on a dual carriageway will likely make no difference as the crown/camber of the lane may not have changed. Look for where the road drains are. If the dual carriage way has drains on the left side and the right side then it is cambered like a single carriageway (and hence would expect a subtle change to teh pull or drift). I'd have thought a binding brake would be easy to identify by a competent garage.