Changed front tires, did alignment, and now my steering wheel is all messed up. Straight for me means my steering wheel is upside down...

Argh anyone got a possible answer to this??

 

It means whoever did the alignment forgot to check that the steering wheel was straight ahead before aligning the wheels.

 

Yep, pretty much. Take it back.

Any minute steering wheel offset can usually be solved by relocating the wheel on the splines - but that is after they correct the gross error.

 

oh and after they fix it never go back or let any friends go there. how the hell that happens? no test drive no QC? WTF

 

Lets say the steering wheel was straight up and down but the wheel was at an angle, either to the left or the right. The sensors would never read. Plus the person doing the alignment would notice when they were adjusting the front toe. Lets say they some how did all the above, the car would fall off the alignmet rack with the steering wheel off 360. Unless the guy did the alignment with the steering wheel upside down. Pm me if you want a real 4 wheel electronic alignment.

 

Well it was impossible for the steering wheel to get so messed up from an alignment, especially when i just aligned the car a month ago. It happens that i know the owner and i work on his fd. What happend was that the bolts for the drivers side rack and pinion mount had backed out completely. The rack was only held by the passengers side mont, so the rack was moving left and right. When turning right the steering will stay 90degress off, but if you jerk the wheel to the left the steering wheel will get closer to the center. This is the first time that i've heard of this on a fd. But after bolting up the rack and aligning the car again, the car once again drives straight.

 

I had the same thing happen last year. One of the bolts on the drivers side rack mount loosened and fell out. Eventually the metal clamp bent enough that the rack could move side to side and cause the steering to act exactly as you describe. It puzzled the hell out of me until I figured out that if I turned left the steering was fine, if I turned right the wheel didn't return to center even though the car tracked straight.

I replaced all the nuts on my rack mounts with locknuts.

Only the drivers side mount locates the rack left to right; the passenger mount merely clamps the rack to the subframe. So if the drivers side mount comes loose the rack can slip left to right and self steer the wheels, causing the steering wheel to go to weird positions.