Cocked steering wheel

[ukrkoz]

Well, ever since I had the car, it has SW cocked to the left about just enough to get on my nerve. Somewhere around 5-7 degrees off.
As truck was eating tires up, I knew alignment was off, but because of the rust, no one could align it.
I finally had all control arms replaced, along with all alignment bolts about 2 mths ago.
Buddy, who owns the shop, did me favor and took truck to Firestone for alignment and I picked it up with stellar alignment print out.
Truck was still pulling to the right and SW was still cocked to the left.
I finally lost my cool and took it to BigO Tires yesterday. I could see alignment screen when tech worked on it and ALL 4 wheels were in red.
I don't want to get into my personal, now absolutely confirmed opinion about Firestone. But I SAW the display. And how he brought it all to green.
Truck tracks much better. As y'all know, it is pretty much impossible to find a flat road to really test it, but it does track better.
SW IS STILL COCKED TO THE LEFT. Nothing changed. I did steering angle reset, twice, no change. Not a whole lot, but noticeable.
At this point, I know, alignment is good.
Am I to assume that it has structural damage somewhere - as I have been under the car every oil change and for other things, and I looked high and low, and saw zero signs of any damage? And that's why SW is cocked?
I ma not dumping any more money into this issue, but if it will keep eating through tires at the rate of new set every 3 years, that's not gonna work for me. At current resale value somewhere around $8k , I already have $3K in control arms and shop fee and alignments. Though I do like the truck.
Or, "they are just made that way"? I had cars that had weird SW or SW column factory angles.

[VStar650CL]

They're supposed to lock up the wheel straight during alignment, and as long as they did (and as long as there's nothing loose in the front end) then it's pretty much impossible to get it wrong. Damage underneath would show up in the readings, since modern machines all calculate everything. That includes caster and thrust angle, which aren't typically adjustable but would have showed up red. If the display was all green then any sort of body-chassis distortion is very unlikely.

The steering angle sensor doesn't affect anything that way unless you have 4WAS, which I don't think was ever available on the Armada/QX56/QX80 platform. My suspicion would be that you're just getting normal deflection from road crown, which the shop can correct if it bugs you by locking the wheel up a few degrees counter while doing the alignment.

[VStar650CL]

PS - It's also possible you have unequal rolling resistance in your front tires, which an alignment won't resolve. An RFV analysis would show that up, but a quick test is to rotate the tires front-back and see if the ka-ka angle changes.

[ukrkoz]

I watched the entire alignment process through the window yesterday. They had SW lock device installed.
I rotate tires every oil change, 6500 miles.
I brought pressure to equal in all 4.
No change.

[AZhitman]

Rack bushings can also cause that - It's technically possible to have perfect alignment at the wheels, but because of the rack position, one tie rod is longer.

VStar, could he simply pull the steering wheel and clock it correctly on the splines (now that the alignment is proper)?

[ukrkoz]

Oh no, I am not pulling SW off. I'm not crazy. I'd rather just drive like that.

[VStar650CL]

Rack bushings can also cause that - It's technically possible to have perfect alignment at the wheels, but because of the rack position, one tie rod is longer.

VStar, could he simply pull the steering wheel and clock it correctly on the splines (now that the alignment is proper)?

Sure, provided the splines aren't too coarse. The SAS is on the column and not the wheel, so that won't be changed by relocating the wheel.

[ukrkoz]

Morning, folks
Thank you for your insight
I'll swap tires side to side Saturday, ran out of steam yesterday. Maybe I do have radial pull.

But I have a silly question that hit me when I was driving to work.
Mine has that digital cruise thing, that pushes you away from the lane back to center. DCR, whatever the name.
What exactly is re-centering the steering/vehicle? As I can feel how SW turns doing that. So there shoud be some sort of prehensor, right? What if it's off kilter?

Oh, and otherwise, truck tracks straight like arrow. On a straight flat road. But problem being, as my hand is used to be slightly down on the SW left side, I start oversteering to the left now. I'm a "left hand at 9" type driver.

[VStar650CL]

What model/year is your ride, and are you talking about self-steering or just the wheel shaker? There are a couple different ways that LDW/LDP and self-steering is handled depending on the M/Y and the equipment.

BTW, I misspoke with that last post. If you move the wheel you will need to recalibrate the SAS.

[ukrkoz]

2011 QX56

It's the one that re-steers on its own towards the center of the lane, after beeping. I don't have shaker, it beeps then counters.
So there has to be some sort of prehensor doing it.

BTW, here's SW video:

https://youtube.com/shorts/tvY0undSo6c? ... GLt_JCwF2Y

2nd half of it show it better. As I said, nothing major but heck of innervating. Most likely would have never even noticed it.

[VStar650CL]

There's no discrete steering hardware on those older LDP systems. The ADAS C/U calculates the yaw angle needed to correct the drift and then the ABS drags one or more of the brakes in order to yank the car back in lane. It does require the SAS to be well-calibrated, but there's nothing in the system that can make your steering wheel ka-ka unless a caliper is dragging when it shouldn't. If that's the case it should show up as a "pull" in normal braking because you'll have a hot brake on one side and a cold one on the other.

[ukrkoz]

Brakes are all good. I had temps checked multiple times and all pins are lubricated and nothing weird about pads wear pattern.

My last hope will be swapping tires side to side and hoping it's just radial pull. Truth be it, my tires are only not even 2 yrs old, but because of malalignment, inner edge is badly worn out on at least 2, so it MAY give weird tracking.

I'll swap tires side to side Saturday and report back here.

Thank you

[VStar650CL]

That's probably your culprit. Unevenly worn tires that are realigned inherently try to flatten their tread area in motion and that causes phantom cambering. I'm surprised they even let you get it aligned if the tires were noticeably uneven. That almost always comes to a bad end.

[ukrkoz]

Well, it's only 2 tires that were on the front left side and only inner edge. The rest is about 70% good.
I'll replace the worst one with current spare, I have 5 of them bought new.
I'll follow over the weekend.
Thank you

[ukrkoz]

Solved.
A bit of story.
Brought to local BigO Tire. Last Saturday. According to their alignment computer, Firestone alignment was - trash. Everything was in red.
I was standing watching them bring everything to green, paid, took off - SW still cocked to the left.
I brought it back today. They spent, 3 of them, over an hour, re aligning it all again.
Gave me spiel about worn out camber bolts holes in the subframe, bad flex pipe and bad front right strut. I actually even saw them run SW re alignment module on computer.
Anyhow. guy test drove it, gave me key - I had to take off, wife was with me to go shopping - truck tracks like a dream, SW cocked twice as bad as before. Did shopping, brought wife back home and straight back to the shop.
Mr Friendly now gave me spiel that "it's all the parts you have to replace". Basically, washed their hands off me.
So I went back home and did what ChatGPT told me to do.
Re centered the steering rack piston. Adjusted toe accordingly.
DONE.
Full description is here:

https://chatgpt.com/share/699a344c-21fc ... 2ead7ba908

It's long read yet.. it worked. Took me 2 trials to get it more or less right. I'll drive for a week, see what happens.
Looks like I could have quite easily DIYd it from the get go.

[VStar650CL]

You compensated the same way as popping the wheel loose, but instead of straight-lining the wheels and then repositioning the the steering wheel, you repositioned the steering wheel and then straight-lined the wheels. What exactly it's compensating is anybody's guess. If there truly isn't anything shifting around in the front end, then by process of elimination it has to be tires or road crown.

[ukrkoz]

Honestly, I am lost at what you said. What was recommended was to center the piston in the steering rack and then move wheels accordingly to compensate, as what alignment shop did (3 times) was to align wheels with steering rack piston off. That's my understanding of what "my girlfriend", ChatGPT, told me to do.
Whatever it is, final result is pretty good, as truck 1. tracks well and 2. SW is well within normal position. If I decide to sell the car, it's sellable. What BigO did was SW cocked left about 25 degrees.
I need to twick it just a little more, as now it's few degrees off to the right. But I'll be working on tires tomorrow anyway, so car will be on the lift, I'll do that final twick. I got the gist of it.