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Old 12-17-2009, 07:59 PM   #1
Richard and Rhonda
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Default My alignment woes remedied, radial pull

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.
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Old 12-17-2009, 10:06 PM   #2
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richard,

you are an amazing dude. glad you got the pull fixed. of course my camper doesnt pull either way.......

tom
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Old 12-18-2009, 04:32 AM   #3
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Thats great news Richard. I know that pull has been driving you crazy. I know you are going to miss all the great times under the coach adjusting the alignment.
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Old 12-18-2009, 02:45 PM   #4
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richard,

if was me, i would have been putting pieces of chewing gum on the rims to try and balance it out. yea i know, 8 oz is a lot of gum, but i do have a large family.

just a thought for next time.

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Old 12-18-2009, 05:51 PM   #5
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Along those lines I was thinking of installing a big fin on top of the coach. I could adjust the angle of the fin via remote control. That way I could compensate for any drift or side wind. I was going to paint it like a sharks fin. I know you would have helped me with the remote. We could even have used a couple of cameras to read the white lines and made it adjust on it's own.
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Old 12-18-2009, 06:02 PM   #6
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Ahh, engineers, don't you love em?
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Old 12-18-2009, 06:34 PM   #7
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i am going to put a 1000cfm compressor at 120psi so i can bounce the front end up and down. so there.

tom
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Old 12-20-2009, 07:43 PM   #8
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I jinxed the whole deal by crowing too early. I am at the inlaws in Chattanooga now, but when I get back to Fort Worth, I am going to pay a visit to the guy who I foolishly allowed to touch my coach.

Yes indeed, swapping the tires cured the pull to the right, and that is still working.
When I picked the coach up, it was driving in rush hour traffic so I didn't really get a good feel for the steering. Since the tech said he didn't change anything except for a minor correction to toe, I wasn't too worried about it. I should have been.

The coach wandered in the road. I know from previous experience this is a hallmark of not enough toe in. I looked at the spec sheet provided by the alignment shop and realized the guy had not followed the guidelines I had given him, and actually had reduced the toe in back to almost neutral. Coaches are ill handling with little toe in. Both Newell and Prevost call for 1/4 inch on their straight axle front ends .

You can imagine how mad I was at the prospect of a two thousand mile trip driving this ill beast. I stopped and my son and I set the toe with a tape measure. Crude, but better than sawing the wheel back and forth.

OK, now we have that fixed, it handles better, but still not like it should. Hmmmm, hundreds of miles of aggravation gives one time to ponder. Hmmmm, what else could have this guy touched. A ha, tell me he didn't. Yep, next rest stop, I crawl under again and look at the adjustment screw on the steering gear box. It has been moved. He has tightened up the steering gear box in an ill guided attempt to stop the pull. I started to suspect this when I was still fighting the wheel. When I made a small correction on one direction, I had to consciously bring the wheel back to center. I noticed in a turn that the wheel would not completely self center.

I was mad, really mad. I had spent a whole day setting the adjustment with a micrometer last summer. This guy had screwed it up in a matter of minutes. So, I started a trial and error process of correcting his "fix". It took three trys, but the final leg had the coach driving like I remember before I paid a so called expert to screw it up.

Some of you who know Rhonda already realize that she is going to have great fun at a cross country trip with me crawling under the coach at every stop. Oh yeah, I dropped a BIG wrench on my face and have a little shiner to show for my efforts.
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Old 12-21-2009, 03:33 AM   #9
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Richard, glad you had the opportunity to bond with your son and your coach again. :-)

Amazing how someone can mess up hours of work in minutes when they don't have a clue.

Glad to see you haven't lost your 'touch'.
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Old 12-21-2009, 04:03 PM   #10
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OK, Richard now you got ME goin'...My '95 goes down the road fine but when I make a sharp slow turn to the right it seems like the steering box is binding slightly...like the power steering is diminished.There also seems to be a groaning sound as it approaches full lock. My local chassis mechanic cannot find anything wrong but they didn't take time to drive it. It turns fine to the left. Whadya think???
Dean
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Old 12-21-2009, 04:05 PM   #11
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so you have a 95 now besides the 93? what are you, a collector?

tom
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Old 12-21-2009, 06:02 PM   #12
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No Tom ,,,, That was a Typo! it's still a '93.

............Don't miss a thing do ya. :-)
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Old 12-22-2009, 12:06 AM   #13
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I would jack up the front axle and turn it lock to lock. If you feel the bind with the wheels off the ground, you may have a bind in the steering gear box. If you don't, I would suspect the bind is in your king pins. Grease them real good and turn the wheel back and forth lock to lock to work the grease in and see if it goes away.

It is not likely that that gear box is too tight. The box is designed to be it's tightest right on dead center, in order to give you the best road feel, but not bind when making sharp turns.

You will know I'm a nut when I tell you how I adjusted mine with a dial indicator. I put two marks about 4 inches apart on the rim of the steering wheel. I also mounted a stationary stick right at the rim of the steering wheel. On the outside of the coach, I put a dial indicator on the outside of the wheel. I started out with a loose adjustment on the worm screw in the gear box. I had my son turn the steering wheel from mark to mark, and I recorded how much movement in thousandths that was at the tire. I tightened the gear box slightly. As you would expect as the slop is removed the same movement at the steering wheel results in more movement at the tire. I kept going until the additional tightening of the worm screw did not increase the movement at the tire. You know at that point that you are just adding drag to the gear box. I backed up the adjustment screw to the previous point and left it there.

I am pretty sure you think this is overkill, however, I can tell you that 1/8 of a turn on that adjusting screw can be the difference between drive like a dream and drive like the devil. AND there is no "feel" at the screw of when it is getting tight.

The manufacturers tell you that it cannot be properly adjusted while on the coach They put them on the bench and use a torque wrench to turn the input shaft and a dial indicator to measure the output shaft movement.

I came up with the above substitute method to avoid removing it from the coach.
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Richard Rhonda Ty and Alex Entrekin
1995 Newell # 390 DD Series 60, Allison World Trans
Subaru Outback toad
CoMotion Tandem
Often wrong, but seldom in doubt
Rhonda's chronicle https://wersquared.wordpress.com/
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Old 12-24-2009, 10:18 PM   #14
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As I would have predicted, my lovely bride has posted a different rendition of the alignment woes.

If you are interested you can read it at wersquared.wordpress.com
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Richard Rhonda Ty and Alex Entrekin
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Rhonda's chronicle https://wersquared.wordpress.com/
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Old 12-25-2009, 03:46 AM   #15
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Richard, only our wives see us as we really are.....and they love us anyway. Rhonda's rendition is priceless! Merry Christmas.....
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