I took my friend's 2009 Fit Base to a local independent tire shop for a front brake job and while there, decided to have an alignment performed during the same visit. At the time, the car had nearly 45,000 miles on it and had been driven by many people. As a result, I was quite surprised that the alignment was still near perfect.
Here are the results to the alignment. The shop used a Hunter ProAlign machine, which is a less-sophisticated version of WinAlign system used by many big-name tire shops.
The Fit's suspension setup consists of a simple MacPherson strut setup and a twist-beam rear. More info about the setup can be found here. However, a twist-beam rear suspension means there are no factory adjustments for the rear toe or rear camber.
As shown by the printout, the LR toe as slightly out of range, most likely due to a recent accident in that area. I was lucky that the alignment tech was automatically willing to loosen the rear twist-beam assembly and "wiggle it" in an attempt to try and get the toe back in spec. We loosened and retightened bolts number #8 in this picture:
On the car, it is the bolt with blue paint:
According to the printout, this was enough to get the rear toe to a more acceptable setting. The thrust angle is now also closer to 0-- I will get the exact value soon, but I remember it being very, very close to 0.
Also, I find it interesting that the front toe was set to 0.05-- which is a slight amount of toe-in. Is this common practice for fwd cars? According to the tech, the main reason why he adjusted the front tie-rods was to center the steering wheel per the Hunter WinToe software. After the adjustment, the steering wheel feels just a hair off center and the car feels a little less stable, but it could just be in my head.
Overall, I think it was a good alignment. Whether or not the alignment was truly needed though, is something I am not sure about. What do you guys think? Any changes you guys would recommend for next time?
Here are the results to the alignment. The shop used a Hunter ProAlign machine, which is a less-sophisticated version of WinAlign system used by many big-name tire shops.
The Fit's suspension setup consists of a simple MacPherson strut setup and a twist-beam rear. More info about the setup can be found here. However, a twist-beam rear suspension means there are no factory adjustments for the rear toe or rear camber.
As shown by the printout, the LR toe as slightly out of range, most likely due to a recent accident in that area. I was lucky that the alignment tech was automatically willing to loosen the rear twist-beam assembly and "wiggle it" in an attempt to try and get the toe back in spec. We loosened and retightened bolts number #8 in this picture:
On the car, it is the bolt with blue paint:
According to the printout, this was enough to get the rear toe to a more acceptable setting. The thrust angle is now also closer to 0-- I will get the exact value soon, but I remember it being very, very close to 0.
Also, I find it interesting that the front toe was set to 0.05-- which is a slight amount of toe-in. Is this common practice for fwd cars? According to the tech, the main reason why he adjusted the front tie-rods was to center the steering wheel per the Hunter WinToe software. After the adjustment, the steering wheel feels just a hair off center and the car feels a little less stable, but it could just be in my head.
Overall, I think it was a good alignment. Whether or not the alignment was truly needed though, is something I am not sure about. What do you guys think? Any changes you guys would recommend for next time?
