focus shakey wheel and veering to left?

Honest John Back Room » Technical matters
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Mon 15 Sep 2003 11:03
focus shakey wheel and veering to left? - Andy22
just bought my 1 year old focus on saturday and have encoutered a couple of problems. i presume the shaking wheel above 60mph is the wheel balancing as i've encoutered this before.

i'm unaware of the solution to the car veering to the left which at 70mph is quite apparant. i guess tracking?

also the garage state the next serve due is in 6,000 miles or 6 months and the car has just had its first service at a year old 7000k miles.
isn't the ford service interval longer?

(incidently its not a ford garage i bought it from)
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Mon 15 Sep 2003 12:11
focus shakey wheel and veering to left? - Kuang
Might be worth having a good look at the front wheels and tyres for evidence of 'kerbing' - a fair smack can louse up the balancing and tracking in one swell foop :)
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Mon 15 Sep 2003 14:13
focus shakey wheel and veering to left? - Andy22
that's along the lines i was thinking, all 4 tyre pressures were 28psi so i'm thinking the car might of been neglected?

but are my thoughts correct that this is tracking and balancing?
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Mon 15 Sep 2003 14:44
focus shakey wheel and veering to left? - M.M
Could be a combination of tracking and balance....

But this is just the feel you can get when a tyre is badly chopped out on the inner edge. Often the outer 75% that you mostly see looks fine.

Try jacking up each front wheel in turn then move the steering to full lock so you can see the very inner edge of each tyre. Spin them round slowly looking for excess wear on the junction between tread and sidewall.

This is a wear pattern that is seen more and more on modern vehicles, seemingly even if the tracking is spot on.

M.M
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