My alignment woes remedied, radial pull

[Richard and Rhonda]

First of all some of you know I might be a bit on the perfectionist side. Some of you also know that I have spent a great deal of time with DIY self alignment of the Newell. It is not for the faint of heart.

Alas, after 18 months of tweaking, the coach still had a slight but nagging pull to the right. I had taken it to two different high zoot alignment places in Fort Worth who wouldn't touch it. I don't think they were afraid of the job as much as they were the owner :-)

Anyway, I was contemplating a trip to Newell just to get them to look at it.

All of the work I had done was without benefit of real alignment equipment, I was using home engineered lasers, string, and trigonometry. It was as true as I could measure it.

I called the Hunter Alignment folks and they gave me a name of a third place here in Fort Worth. I went there. The tech was all yes sir we guarantee satisfaction, I know what to do, worked on a bunch of them, yes sir, bring it on.

So I do. He didn't know how to adjust anything other than toe in. HOWEVER, I did get a printout of all the measurements done on real alignment equipment. DANG, they were exactly like mine, down to the tenth of a degree, AND they show the coach to be in perfect alignment. BUT, it still pulls.

I go back in after the test drive, and in a moment of desperation, I ask the shop to swap the front tires. Right to left, and left to right. BINGO, JACKPOT, true as an arrow going down the road. It's called radial pull, and sometimes due to manufacturing differences one tire will have different rolling resistance than another. Put that on the front and it can cause a pull. I had read about that on different tire forums, and should have suspected it earlier.

Gee, wish I had tried that first :-(

But now I don't have a good reason to trade coaches.