Silly kid, I've been driving this car for 16 yrs, and it has been on the road for pretty much all of it. Now, maybe I don't know the meaning of a chop shop - but the shops I'm talking about are just inner city non-licensed repair shops. You can bring the parts, and all you pay is labor.

As far as repairs, I myself have never gotten them to repair anything....except cut off an old exhaust system from this VG. They did all that work for 60 bucks cash, no receipt. It ran over an hr - I had my stopwatch. It included them using the MIG & Oxyfuel torch to get the old studs out. This particular shop though has a good rep and the mechanics are highly skilled - they are sri lankan or from India. I highly recommend them. If chop shop means stolen parts...then that's not what I meant.

 

silly canadian a chop shop is a place where people take cars they have stolen they sell them to a chop shop and those guys either chop the car up and sell the parts or clear plates and vids and resell it

...thats where u just told someone to go

 

Well I finally got the driver side front wheel bearing replaced and its NICE to not hear that light rubbing noise anymore. However, a bigger issue has reared its ugly head. Funny how 3rd gen Maximas do that huh? Anyways, my car now pulls to the left and now I must have my steering wheel turned 1/8th of a turn to the right to go straight.

Here is the info I got when I went to Les Schwab on Monday:
Camber Spec.= -1.0 degree to 0.5 degree
current Camber = 0.9 degree
Caster Spec. = 0.5 degree to 2.0 degree
current Caster = -0.7 degree
Toe Spec. = 0.05 degree to 0.13 degree
current Toe = -0.29 degree

Now this is only for the front driver's side wheel. All the other wheels alignments are fine. I know everything goes back in only one way and when I called the mechanic about this issue he said the same thing. Right after I had Vina Autocare replace my outer tie rods (about a month ago) I took it over to Les Schwab and had an alignment and everything was fine after that. Do you folks have any ideas as to what I can do at this time? Once again, any assistance with this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

negative caster means that either the top of the strut is too far forward, or the knuckle is too far back

 

have you checked your control arm bushings on that side? they can reek havoc with alignment specs when they go bad

 

sorry i did not read all posts but DO YOU HAVE THE SPRING COMPRESSED? YOU CANT PUT AN EXTENDED STRUT ON A CAR.

 

If your replaced bearing did in fact remove the "rubbing" sound (disk on pads or caliper?), then its obvious that it was worn to the point where it had a lot of play in it ..................... since you now removed the play there is an obvious need to have a wheel alignment done. Saying that things can only go back one way doesn't negate the change in the "play" and thus alignment.


............... and not one of those "alignment variables" is within spec - WTF!

.................and knowing that the alignment specs for only a particular wheel is 100% can at best be considered to be useless - its of no use as the combination of the alignment of all 4 wheels will determine the directional stability of the vehicle as a whole - you need to posses a "withing spec" alignment result for all 4 wheels at the same time in order to start making sense of this all

 

Well there is no adjustment for this that I know of. Les Schwab said there was no further adjustments that they could make.

Good idea, I'll check that tommorow and see whats up. One thought though, if this is indeed the issue, why would it pop up now? As I said, I already had an adjustment done a month prior and afterwards everything was good.

I had just installed new struts (Gabriel Ultra) with mounts (KYB) and boots. I don't beleive you can get extended struts for 3rd gen Maximas. What do you mean by "Do you have the spring compressed"? Of course they are. They have to be compressed to install them, and they are compressed when you drop the car back onto the ground.

I do beleive it had a tiny amount of play in it before they were replaced. By replacing bad/worn parts, shouldn't things now be back to where a proper alingment could be done? Should I take my car to another Les Schwab and see what they say?

 

you're a retard. go crawl back whence you came. :matt93se:

 

well with the poly bushings you can KINDA adjust caster by adding washers behind the front bushing... but if your alignment is out of spec, such ghettorig fixes are not good idea.

bad control arm bushings will allow the control arm to move up, down, left, right, forward and backward... which will affect your: camber, caster, and toe angle. what's the condition of your tierods and balljoints and strut mounts also?

 

From a technical point of view:

Look at eg that toe spec - its supposedly accurate to 2 decimal places (FTW!) .................... any minute bit of play in the bearing or elsewhere is obviously going to affect that severely. How any professional could turn around and say "blah blah blah one way" and justify his innocence in the net result that way is beyond me - if he knew what he was doing and understood the implications of replacing a severely worn bearing, then he should have obviously advised/insisted on you doing an allignment

 

We just installed a set on my brothers G20 without compressing them to put them in the car.

 

The alignment guy said he couldn't get the toe in spec? I'd ask him to explain that - that just doesn't make sense. I'd guess that's giving you the most problems with pulling to one side.

Also - like LVR said - you need to know the alignment of all 4 wheels and take that into consideration.

 

as much adjustibility as the tierods have it seems hard to believe they couldn't get the toe in-spec unless the alignment was not maintainable (ie when you have loose parts), or if something was bent.

 

+1 .................. and if any wheel's parameters are out of spec they didn't accomplish an alignment and you therefore don't have to pay either!