Ask the Car Guy @socky Mar 10, 2019
What is your car trouble?
I want to give back to Steemit community and provide some help on something that I know very well. Cars and how to fix them.
Please ask me about your car issue. Won't go into gear. Strange sounds. Don't know if you should take your car in to the shop. Just ask.
Send me the make, model, and year along with car symptoms.
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Hi socky it's me again
Car Model : 1991 Nissan Cefiro A31
Front Tyre : 235/40/18 (85% tread)
Rear Tyre : 225/45/18 (less than 35% tread)
I'm currently facing a problem which my front wheels are scrubbing the tie rods and sway bar whenever I turn to maximum lock. I'm not sure why if I turn to maximum lock (left and right) when the car is stationary, it will not hit the sway bar and tie rods (left and right). It seems like I need to have a little bit of forward movement then when I turn the steering it can turn more than when I was turning it from stationary.
My knuckles are custom made knuckles for drifting, so my angle is currently more than stock. I'm getting a wheel spacer to solve this issue.
I need to diagnose how bad the scrubbing is, so I can get the correct thickness of the wheel spacers. I saw some video online that they can turn the steering rack or wheels by jacking up the front, and turn the wheel with their hands only, with the engine off too..
Just like this video at 5:45 :
May I know how this can be done?
Also, I can feel the car is slowing down (feels like braking but I'm not hitting the brake pedal) whenever I try to turn the wheel sharply, not full lock, before entering a corner, I'm not sure this is caused by the scrubbing the tie rods / sway bar because I haven't reach full lock yet, or is it because my front wheel angle is more than stock, thus inducing understeer and also slowing the car down because of forward bite. Clutch was depressed so definitely not engine braking due to drop of rpm
P.S : Just to express my gratitude, I thank you and really appreciate your advices and solutions all the while, you contributed a lot on my decision making and preventing me from paying for unnecessary stuffs, lol..Cheers!
Thank you for using my blog. You really ask the tough questions :-) No worries, I'm just glad that someone finds my blog useful.
The video doesn't mention one important issue the spacers create.
This is something that I deal with on off-road cars and trucks. The vehicle from the factory with factory wheels and tires is designed to have steering that pivots at the center of the tire or as close as possible. When wheels are changed with offset or spacers are used, this changes where this pivot point is. The tires will then move around the pivot point instead of pivoting at the center of the tire. This causes the entire front of your car to move left or right when turning the car. The result is the car will have stability problems. One way to correct this is to use narrower wheels and tires with offset towards the inside. The other alternative is to just drive a car that is difficult to handle.
I know that you can't possibly keep your vehicle factory. Don't worry, I can't either. I recommend just cutting out a tire size plywood blank to mimic the tire and bolt it in place of the wheel. Attach blocks of wood on the inside of the plywood at one spot to mimic the tire. Bolt that on and spin it to see where the tire could possibly hit. Change the thickness of the wood blocks to see what the offset should be and compare the result to the actual tire/wheel.
I don't know what the breaking is caused by. One tire will turn at a different angle than the other by design. That may have increased with modifications and be much more exaggerated than factory.
Plywood blank... genius... thank you very much!