yeah he spent a long time on it and I was happy with the numbers.
I will swap both tires and try just to see. As far as the steering wheel it just doesn’t feel right. It feels like there is more resistance when turning the wheel slightly left while driving straight compared to turning it to the right. Kind of like it’s fighting me more to turn it left. It’s like it immediately wants to return to straight when I slightly turn it to the left. Hard to explain. I def think it’s in the rack tho.

 

When you swapped the front tires, did you have the tires re-mounted on the wheels, or did you just run them backward for testing purposes?

If they were re-mounted, try swapping them again without re-mounting. They'll be turning the wrong direction, but this is just a test. I would try the same with the back wheels. See if the pull goes the other way.

 

Nope didn’t remount them, just swapped the fronts and ran them backwards. I didn’t do the rears so I’ll swap the fronts and rears and see if there’s any difference

 

While you've got the car jacked up, grab the wheel and try to rock it back and forth to check for play in the wheel bearing.

 

Just saw the other thread about the number of turns require to remove the old tie rods.
If they had re installed the rack far enough out of phase to take it off high point, I'd expect the difference to be alot greater.
Still worth checking the number of steering wheel turns from center to lock each direction though.

 

I will check the steering wheel turns today, didn’t think of that. So today I took my front sway bar off the car and then swapped positions of the front and rear tires side to side and went for a drive… no difference. I’m going back to the alignment shop tomorrow and going to ask them to add some caster to the right side. My questions are how much variance should there be in caster from each side, .5°? Also, based on the current caster settings (7.8° on both sides ) should I add caster to the passenger side or take decrease caster on the driver side? And would I need to make any adjustments to the rear also or just the caster on the front?

 

I don't think I would mess with that alignment.

After driving the car, feel the temperature of each wheel with your hand. If one or two are significantly hotter than the others, you may have a dragging brake.

Have you tried running engine with the car on the lift? Does the steering want to turn on its own?

Does it pull right at low speeds, like 20mph?

 

You don’t think I should add some caster to the right side to combat road crown?
cranked the car with the front off the ground and nothing happened/changed.
Yes going slow on a road that’s flat enough that the wheel should not move the wheel will **** to the right maybe 2 or 3° which will then cause the car to start drifting.
Im going to drive my friends 08’ Z51 sometime soon to compare but I know the car did not used to do this prior to having the HB replaced/new tires/new sway bars. It would have drove me nuts but I was happy with the way it drove.
Im also going to have the alignment shop measure the ride height while I’m there.

 

Dying to know the fix, hopefully its something cheap/silly that has been overlooked. Best of luck man, sounds like a rack issue to my unprofessional brain...

 

Adding some caster to the RF is a time honored way to combat road crown. 1/2* spread might be about tops.
Adding a little neg camber to the RF is also. Maybe 1/4*? Usually it's one or the other, and I prefer caster. It's called a 'non tire wearing angle'....
Reducing either value on the L/H is also appropriate.
Judging by how close his tolerances are, your alignment tech is very diligent. You'll be cutting him a break if you just have him adjust just one side. He'll need to reset toe regardless.

But if it pulls the same traveling either direction down the center of the street, suspect something else.
Torquetube's advice on checking the wheel temp is good!
Just one more factor... and not to be rude, but are you a 'larger' guy?
Corvettes are pretty heavy, but alot of weight on one side of the car will skew the values from unladen to loaded
On race cars, I always ballast driver weight.

 

I appreciate it and I really hope I figure it out because I’m OCD about stuff like this and it’s driving me nuts. But I think you’re right about the rack.

It never pulls to the left, only the right. The only time the car will wander left is if the road is heavily slanted to the left.
Nope not a larger guy, I’m 6ft 200lbs
The more I drive it the more I’m convinced it is not an alignment issue but rather a problem with one of the steering components. If I hold
the wheel straight the car will drive straight but just as soon as I let go of the wheel it will turn to the right a couple of degrees even when I’m on a flat straight road…hell even when in the left lane and the road looks slightly slanted left. There has to be something misaligned or broken in either the steering column or steering rack that isn’t allowing the wheel to hold a center position. If in the rack, what are the possibilities? Could is be something in the steering column itself causing the wheel to not hold its central position?
Theres been a lot of hands on the motor and engine back components. Steering rack was moved back when I had the balancer replaced. Later on down the road the motor was pulled for engine work, I imagine the rack and steering shaft were messed with to do that as well. It’s hard to say what has happened during all that. To me it feels like something in the rack is causing the wheel to not be able to hold its center position and it just takes the path of least resistance as soon as I let go of the wheel.

 

The only thing I can think of between the steering wheel and the tie rods that could account for a pull would be internal to the rack itself.
There's a clever little valve at the pinion shaft that directs fluid to either side of the rack piston when you turn the wheel, providing the assist.
When the rack is 'neutral', the valve is (supposed to be...) closed to both sides, preventing pressure from reaching either side.
If that valve is damaged, it could allow pressure to be applied constantly to one side, accounting for your symptoms.
I've never personally seen it, but I have heard of it happening.
Early Chrysler products had an adjustable valve on top of the gearbox. Easy to have out of adjustment, not so easy to get it centered!
Way out, and the wheel would take off and go to full lock all by itself.

If it is damaged, I'd expect it to move the wheels to the right when you run the engine while the car is up in the air.
But sounds like it doesn't do that....
If it did, I'd call it conclusive on a bad rack.
I'd hesitate to call the rack bad without that, but it may be the last untried avenue.

 

Interesting…. I wonder how one would go about troubleshooting to see if that valve is damaged?
Gonna try it again but when I had the front lifted and cranked the car I didn’t see the wheel move, maybe I missed it.
I went back to Firestone and talked to them. I got an appointment Monday to take it back and let their guy who is supposed to be the man when it comes to working with vettes and other sports cars check it out. He wasn’t there the day I had it aligned. I think the tech that did my alignment did a great job but hopefully this other guy can help me figure out what the heck is going on.

 

Wanted to follow up on this. Took the car back to the shop today and worked with one of their best techs. He discovered that the cradle had not been aligned back properly as it was from the factory when previously removed, however it was only off maybe 1/8th of an inch or less and said that it really shouldn’t affect anything. He made an adjustment to the thrust angle as well as tweaked the toe a bit. He pretty much said the car was basically dog walking down the road on its previous settings. He finished and sure enough it drives much straighter and feels better overall. I still feel some drifting to the right but I think a lot of that is the pitch of the crap roads around here. I’m pretty satisfied with how it’s driving now but he said if I wanted to bring it back he would fix the cradle and re-align it. Should I leave it alone or would It be worth having that cradle repositioned? Here is the alignment sheet from today. I’m just relieved that the steering rack doesn’t seem to be the problem.

 

Glad it's feeling better.
Curious about any adjustments to the thrust angle. Previous readings posted showed even rear toe/0 thrust angle already?

 

No on the previous settings the thrust angle was .06 and now it is 0
On the front, the previous settings on the steer ahead was -.13 and now is 0

On the chart the top is the before settings and the bottom is the after settings

I think I see what your saying tho because when the car was aligned two weeks ago the final numbers showed 0 on the thrust angle and -.01 on the steer ahead…. So I have I have no idea why on the “before” settings from yesterday it showed differently…. Maybe things are shifting?

 

Also, should the cradle be okay being slightly off from the factory mark or should I have them re-position it?
How many mounting bolts are on the front cradle? I’m going to get under the car this weekend and make sure they are all torqued to spec, I have a feeling maybe they aren’t.

 

Hate to bug you again on this issue but I have a question. The car now will drive straight when on a truly straight road. If there is any pitch to the road at all, even so slight that you really can’t tell by looking, the car will pull to pretty hard. And maybe it’s just because of how most roads are but the majority of the time the pull is to the right. What needs to be adjusted to try and combat road crown? Going by the final specs that I previously posted what would you adjust to help?

 

The attached doc should help you. It's straight from GM

 

Ok thank you. I don’t know if the cradle being off from the factory positioning by an 1/8 of an inch or so would actually cause an issue or not but i don’t like it