KIA Picanto - Adjust rear wheel alignment

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Fri 4 Apr 2014 12:57
KIA Picanto - Adjust rear wheel alignment - kingpenda

Has anyone corrected non-adjustable rear wheel alignment (on a front wheel drive car) using stock shim material. I'm thinking along the lines of placing a strip of suitable thickness material between the outer edge of the stub axle flange and the suspension arm. I've already calculated that a shim thickness of around .020" will be sufficient to give me the amount of correction I require but I'm a little bit concerned that as this method will introduce a slight gap, albeit a reducing one, between the flange and the suspension arm that it might compromise the integrity of the rear suspension.

Good idea, or should I forget it and go back to playing tiddlywinks?

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Fri 4 Apr 2014 14:03
KIA Picanto - Adjust rear wheel alignment - Railroad.
You need to get out more.
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Fri 4 Apr 2014 22:00
KIA Picanto - Adjust rear wheel alignment - MrEckerslikefromRamsbottom

The original Mini had to have its rear wheels set to toe in by about 1/16" to 1/8" (as I remember) by using a shim between each radius arm and the sub-frame.

I found this out when I bought a new Mini at discount from a dealer in London and when I joined a motorway on one of those looping tight-bend slip roads, I had to pull hard on the steering wheel to get it to go around! It really wanted to go in a straight line. My local BMC dealer had no idea, of course. Don't know why I bothered going to them.

After pondering the problem overnight, I got out the old Paddy Hopkirk tracking gauge and found that the back wheels were set parallel. And there were no shims in the radius arms as there should have been. Typical of the build quality of British cars in those days, the factory had omitted to fit them. I seem to remember that I found the answer in David Vizard's book on Mini tuning. The book gave the required shim thicknesses to give different amounts of toe-in, but I wanted to go for the recommended toe-in. Noting the shim thickness for the recommended setting, out came the micrometer and I check out all the bits of steel which I had, and separators from a filing cabinet measured at the correct thickness. I cut and drilled two shims from the sheet, fitted them and the problem was solved.

Now, I had a noticable fault. What are you feeling in the handling that you don't like? Is it a similar problem to mine?

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Sat 5 Apr 2014 12:31
KIA Picanto - Adjust rear wheel alignment - kingpenda

Now, I had a noticable fault. What are you feeling in the handling that you don't like? Is it a similar problem to mine?

Thanks for the help. My problem is not so much a handling problem as a rear tyre wear problem. I had a 4 wheel alignment check carried out which showed the O/S rear to be toeing-in excessively but not quite on the manufacturers limit . The N/S rear isn't quite so bad, but I would prefer both of them to be close to the manufacturers neutral figure which is considerably less than the present setting. I feel sure that would cure the tyre wear problem.

Kia's attitude is that as the readings are within limits there is nothing wrong with the car, end of story. They have yet to give me a satisfactory explanation as to why the rear tyres are wearing unevenly and excessively if, as they claim, there is nothing wrong.

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Sat 5 Apr 2014 02:14
KIA Picanto - Adjust rear wheel alignment - Cyd

Don't like the sound of that.

I had a similar problem with my Dispatch van. Two places tried setting the front alignment to try and stop uneven wear on front tyres. It wasn't until I landed at TW Tyres in Rugby where they have a 4 wheel jig, that I found out the rear axle had an alignment problem that couldn't be corrected as it was fixed. They were able to adjust the fronts to compensate and a year later tyre wear is now even.

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