Following on from what Nolan said, if the guy doing your alignment is
half-way competant, they should fit a device that locks the steering wheel
exactly level before they start, then they will adjust both track-rods to
get the wheels straight ahead. I would agree that the most likely cause is
a lazy mechanic adjusting just one track-rod, or a DPO adjusting the
tracking at home.
However, I would disagree that a dodgy set-up could lead to the steering
being quicker in one direction than the other, unless there was serious
damage to a front suspension upright. A certain number of degrees of
steering wheel turn will always move the rack the same distance to the left
or right, regardless of whether the rack is centred or not. The steering is
quicker towards the end of the movement, but that will always occur after x"
of rack movement from the straight ahead, regardless of where the rack
started.
You can check if it is the steering wheel that is wrong on the steering
column, or if it is the track-rods being misadjusted, by comparing the angle
of the steering wheel at the extremes of travel - how many degrees rotation
to left and right lock?
One final thought - maybe the rack has been deliberately re-adjusted because
it was too worn in the straight-ahead position, but re-aligning so that
straight-ahead occurs on a different section of rack was done to remove
slack from the steering?
Richard & Daffy
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