Odd steering issue, pulling left, ideas?

[tarvos]

Hi all,

 

We’ve got odd steering issues on our 07 (ANH10) Alphard, using the forum to get my thoughts straight and bounce ideas around if you have them:

 

• Pulls left
• Asymmetric effort left (easy, keen to turn) and right (heavy, sluggish to turn)
• Steering wheel off to the right when driving straight.

 

We only recently got hold of it and the importer/converter has taken it to two alignment places to try and rectify it without solving the issue. The last (Kwik Fit) report showed:

 

• Reasonable toe (0.09° total toe-in front and 0.15° total toe-in rear) and camber OK, neutral steering (allegedly with handwheel straight..)
• Different Caster angles of 2.04° and 3.01° Left/Right which are potentially a concern

 

What’s odd is that I would expect the difference in caster (more on the right), coupled with toe-in, to pull right and lighter steering going right, i.e. the exact opposite of what we’re experiencing (hence “odd” steering issue)

 

Have also already checked for and ruled out:

• Obvious damage/wear to all four corners
• Tyre problem (it has 4 new Michelins all within 1psi)
• Sticking brake (no excessive heat in any brake after straight motorway run)

 

I can measure ~5mm difference between subframe bolts and lower ball joint bolts left-to-right so I think this supports there being an alignment issue.

 

Questions I have for the forum are:

 

• Can you folks confirm that ANH10 and ANH20 Alphards are a different chassis? I am asking as:
  • Kwik Fit wrongly selected an ANH20 as the reference vehicle when they did the alignment. I’m not sure this is of much consequence, but obviously not a great start.
  • Regarding specs I’ve browsed the forum and see there seems to be some trust in jltechno.com e.g. here and here show different values for 10 and 20.
  • Pure speculation but perhaps the wrong chassis parts have been fitted to our van in the past.
• Am I correct that there is no caster adjustment on the ANH10? There is nothing obvious, but I am also seeing aftermarket offset rear lower arm bushes, and am wondering why…
• I am on the south coast between Southampton and Portsmouth, can anyone recommend an alignment place that knows what they are doing with these vans down here? Might even need to corner-weight it to rule out having the wrong spring in one corner, and other dumb potential problems like that…
• Anyone had anything similar and can report if/how they solved it?

 

In general the van is in great condition and I seriously doubt it’s been in an accident, but it could have been kerbed hard, not ruled that out…

 

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

Edited August 27 by tarvos

[dezufo]

Steering wheel should not be off to the right so that is a bad start as to who set it at that, chassis is different so series 20 parts will not fit series 10. You need to find a place that has Hunter equipment and use the jltech info for a series 10 but they should have an alphard in their system, normally no caster adjustment unless you have a racing set up, have you checked for play in the control arm bushes

[tarvos]

Thanks, that's useful to know. I've done a rudimentary hand check of the suspension up on a lift but it was just that, not a proper load. I'll get the Mrs to turn the handwheel around while I'm underneath as it's up on ramps at the front at the moment. I don't have a racing setup, looks dead stock. I do wonder if the 10 and 20 are different chassis whether it's subtle and someone can fit the wrong bit and have a "mostly OK" car that does weird stuff like this?? It's a fresh import so service history is in Japanese and I haven't tried to translate any of it yet.

One more question now it occurs to me: Does anyone know of reference measurements for the subframe that I can try to get a tape measure over while it's up on the ramps, just to rule out an obvious bend in this? (will check the bushes first, but as a plan B...)

[dezufo]

If you get a CarVX report it will tell you if it has any accident damage while in japan, you have to input the chassis number and pay a fee, about £24, they then email the results. e.g. chassis number MNH15-0028305 , if it does not work just put a W in, e.g. MNH15W-. For future reference with part numbers check in the link amayama.com

[tarvos]

Good point, we got a CarVX before we accepted the vehicle and then I promptly forgot about it. I've checked back and yes it's good. Well - no report of a "collision", whatever that means...I imagine you could clonk it off a kerb, not tell anyone, replace the wheels and CarVX would be none the wiser...? (

 

Thanks for the link to Amayama, bookmarked 👍

[dezufo]

clonking the kerb would mess up the tracking not likley to mess up any thing else though

Edited August 28 by Rojie
Poor language

[tarvos]

Yes, also the 1° difference in caster left to right is about a 12mm difference in either the top mount or lower ball joint position (sin(1°)*700mm-ish). This should be very obvious if it were crash damage, and I'm yet to spot any...

[tarvos]

I've checked underneath with the Mrs on steering wheel duty and whilst there's nothing obvious moving around on the lower arm bushes, the steering rack is moving probably 5mm, maybe more, each direction (10mm ish total movement). Is that normal? Seems a hell of a lot to me but I am used to much smaller sportier things, and this is a barge by comparison...

[tarvos]

Does anyone reading this happen to have a source for the King Pin Inclination / Steering Axis Inclination spec for the ANH10 and the ANH20? It is not listed on jltechno.com, or anywhere else I care to search (briefly, anyway!).

 

Having no luck finding an alignment shop with ANH10 in their database, but maybe we're not trying hard enough... Can use the JLTechno specs for ANH10 but the calculated caster angle is going to be wrong if the KPI/SAI isn't known.

 

Thanks in advance

[smurf]

If it exists, it will probably be somewhere on the website linked here 

 

[pcous]

Hi George,

 

You could take a loook at a previous thread -

https://uk.alphardclub.com/forums/topic/6917-tracking/#comment-20580

 

In addition to the jltechno data, our local alignment guy found a more extensive list of figures, which included the range for SAI and Included angle, which may be helpful. We had an issue with pulling left, in the end we found it was due to a poorly assembled wheel bearing retainer on the rear - 2 of the 4 nuts were missing (!) so the leading edge of the OSR wheel was facing slightly outwards.

[tarvos]

Just to wrap this one up, it was a combination of a bad steering rack (presume sticky/stuck valve) and a bad alignment. Local Kwik Fit still haven't managed to find the NH10 and I hadn't spotted the comment on the linked thread about about giving KF Kings Heath a call beforehand, so it was still set up as a 20 but sorted now. The previous dodgy caster measurements were, I think, an artifact of the off-centre steering wheel. There's virtually nothing between them now it's driving dead straight, and clearly they wouldn't have moved with just a rack change and (not sketchy) realignment.