Thread: 130 defender steering problem

Originally Posted by newhue

Print out, you got to be kidding. Just some starry looking thing mounted on the wheels. I forgot to mention there was was block of wood in there two. I guess you got to bend it on something. The business owner didn't take it lightly, and did say there could be no improvement. He played it down that he has done a lot of Defenders and many of the RAAF units.

At the time unknown to me I had a slight bend in the left trailing arm. The bending fixed the tacking off to the left straight away with my half worn XZL's. New tyres fixed my wobbling steering wheel, and a new trailing arm fixed the untraceable ever so slightly unevenly warn tyres.
When I rotated my two brand new spares onto the car recently, I had the old wobbly steering wheel again. So a trip to a different tyre fitter and had one tyre rebalanced and no more wobbly steering wheel. I knew it was that one because I could see the front guard going up and down at 80km/h.

I had standard 130 suspension with TJM steel bar and brush bars, and plasma winch at the time of the tracking left problem.

I find the idea of a rear alignment on these things a bit weird. There are two arms the same length in theory and some rubber spacers, if the spacers aren't worn out what is there to align.
Same with the front, if the tow out is set at 1 then the jobs done. Well tha't my understanding.
There is no fine adjustment on these things. They are made to bang and bump over stuff all day.

Rear alignment, as you said most things should be the same but if there not the rear alignment will be out. Either bent control arms or worn bushes.

Front, as I said I have had a bent front housing and that was wearing tyre out, I stuck it on a aligner and got the print out, so I was able to look at my camber which was out of spec, castor angle as well as I have slotted hubs and toe.

I see you have mentioned that you had a bent trailing arm, this could have been the cause the whole time.

As the rear left arm was bent it is now shorter and this pulls the rear axle forward on the left side this means the rear axle is pushing the car to the left(rear steer).

hmm, possible, makes sense, but if the slightest bend that I had in my trailing arm shot the car off into the scrub within 30 meters like it used to then that's pretty amazing.
The mate who has the TD5 that had the same pulling left problem, the same fix, but no bent trailing arms puts that whole question of the fix back into the court unfortunately.

Originally Posted by newhue

hmm, possible, makes sense, but if the slightest bend that I had in my trailing arm shot the car off into the scrub within 30 meters like it used to then that's pretty amazing.
The mate who has the TD5 that had the same pulling left problem, the same fix, but no bent trailing arms puts that whole question of the fix back into the court unfortunately.

Yeah ok, may be not if it was bent so slight. Pretty hard to work out on a forum haha.