3 Wheel Alignments in 7 days

watrob · #1 07-03-2007, 08:14 PM

My X5 has Adative Drive & Active Steering and has had 3 wheel alignments in the last 7 days. BMW cannot stop it from pulling left, they even put a set of smaller wheels & tires on it and it still pulled left.

I told them the castor on the X5 needs adjusting because we drive on the lefthand side of the road, the lefthand front wheel needs to come forward & the righthand side front wheel needs to be pushed back.

Guess what no castor adjustment, so they build a car to drive on the righthand side of the road and build in castor so to suit the camber for righthand road side driving then export the car to countries that drive on the opposite side and wonder why they have a problem.

BMW's head tech is flying into town next Tuesday to look at it, I told them fix it or take the car back. When you drive it you have to have 3-4lbs of presuure pulling down on the steering wheel to keep the X5 straight on the road, after 20 min your wrist is aching from the constaint strain.

Not sure what BMW are going to do but they will have to make a castor kit for sure to overcome the this problem in countries like Australia, England & South Africa.

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vinuneuro · #2 07-03-2007, 08:24 PM

What are you talking about? Caster (and toe,camber) should be the same for the left and right suspension irregardless of lhd or rhd.

If after 3 alignments, everything is in spec geometrically (both sides are at the same spec, within facotry spec), there's most def something faulty with the Active Steering.

jamesboags · #3 07-03-2007, 08:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by watrob

My X5 has Adative Drive & Active Steering and has had 3 wheel alignments in the last 7 days. BMW cannot stop it from pulling left, they even put a set of smaller wheels & tires on it and it still pulled left.

I told them the castor on the X5 needs adjusting because we drive on the lefthand side of the road, the lefthand front wheel needs to come forward & the righthand side front wheel needs to be pushed back.

Guess what no castor adjustment, so they build a car to drive on the righthand side of the road and build in castor so to suit the camber for righthand road side driving then export the car to countries that drive on the opposite side and wonder why they have a problem.

BMW's head tech is flying into town next Tuesday to look at it, I told them fix it or take the car back. When you drive it you have to have 3-4lbs of presuure pulling down on the steering wheel to keep the X5 straight on the road, after 20 min your wrist is aching from the constaint strain.

Not sure what BMW are going to do but they will have to make a castor kit for sure to overcome the this problem in countries like Australia, England & South Africa.

That does suck.. I haven't heard other reports of this... although not sure if anyone has the same setup as you in OZ e.g Adaptive and active steer...Let us know how you get on.. btw did you install your bulbs as yet ?

watrob · #4 07-04-2007, 12:31 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by vinuneuro

What are you talking about? Caster (and toe,camber) should be the same for the left and right suspension irregardless of lhd or rhd.

If after 3 alignments, everything is in spec geometrically (both sides are at the same spec, within facotry spec), there's most def something faulty with the Active Steering.

Cars that are produced for righthand road driving have a caster set for that. That is the distance between righthand front & righthand rear wheels is greater than the distance between the lefthand front and lefthand rear wheels.

So when cars arrive in Australia where we drive on the lefthand side of the road, a lot of cars (not all, as some imports have caster adjustments built in or are designed for Australian, England & South African roads) pull to the left. With my wifes Mercedes AMG 55 they have a caster kit which they install at the dealer ( they install a kit on every mercedes that pulls to the left), this kit drags the left front wheel forward and on the righthand side it pushes the wheel back. By doing this the camber on the road is negated.

Go and measure the distance between the wheels of a LH drive car and you will see the lefthand side is shorter than the righthand side by mm's.

I have been buying European cars for 20 years and this is known fact, it becomes worse when wilder tires & wheel are fitted, to over come the camber on the road you have to adjust the castor. You cannot adjust toe-in as you where out your tires and RFT are $800 each.

The X5 cost me close to $140,000 at least the bloody thing should be able drive down the road straight the same as a $9,950 Hyundai Exel.

We see this all the time in Australia, to save themselves $20 a car they don't give a castor adjustment. In the old days they use to put more air pressure in the lefthand tire.

So don't tell me that I don't know what am I talking about, they would not be flying in the head BMW tech just to have a cup of coffee, he's coming to work out how to do castor adjustment, they cannot afford the bad press. BMW & Mercedes are the leading luxury cars in Australia and they take things very seriously and this is a major problem.

watrob · #5 07-04-2007, 12:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by jamesboags

That does suck.. I haven't heard other reports of this... although not sure if anyone has the same setup as you in OZ e.g Adaptive and active steer...Let us know how you get on.. btw did you install your bulbs as yet ?

Hi Mate,

Just replied to that other chap, yeh the lights are great, will take a photo. You will be happy as they are all white now, even the angel eyes.

The wider the tires you put on a car the more it will track left due to the camber of our roads here. It is worse with these European cars as they come out of the factory with caster set for LHD cars and to give you no castor adjustment is poor manufacturing. The castor is set correctly for LHD cars why just forget about the RHD cars, its pretty poor and they now know it and now they have got problem.

The back streets are ok but get the X5 on a highway or freeway over 100klm per hour and it take a lot of force on the steering wheel to hold 2500kg of X5 on the road.

JCL · #6 07-04-2007, 03:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by watrob

Cars that are produced for righthand road driving have a caster set for that. That is the distance between righthand front & righthand rear wheels is greater than the distance between the lefthand front and lefthand rear wheels.

So when cars arrive in Australia where we drive on the lefthand side of the road, a lot of cars (not all, as some imports have caster adjustments built in or are designed for Australian, England & South African roads) pull to the left. <snip>

I don't have your years of RHD vehicle buying experience, but something just doesn't sound right.

I fully agree that setting the caster different on one side can cause the car to pull in that direction. I agree that this could be used to compensate for a roadway with a lot of crown to it. I just don't think that your problem is that simple.

Many vehicles built today (including a lot of those with strut type suspension) don't have adjustable caster. A lot of those vehicle are used in RHD and LHD applications, without problems.

I have driven my RHD vehicle in the UK to France, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and back, and never found a problem with pulling. I have also driven on many dual carriageways in the UK, and each lane has the opposite crown. You can't assume that all road lanes have the same crown. If you set the vehicle up for the curb lane it would be wrong for the passing lane. Also, the X5 is widely sold in the UK and has not had this problem reported.

I suspect there is a problem with your active steering. I would be worried if they wanted to adjust the caster out of spec to fix the problem, as it would potentially be masking another issue.

Just my $0.02

watrob · #7 07-10-2007, 01:11 AM

The head tech from BMW flew into town today to inspect my X5 that's got Adaptive Drive & Active Steering with 20" wheels to see why its pulling to the left and the fact you have to keep righthand down pressure on the steering wheel to keep it on the road.

Well, yes we have a problem "Houston" and the fact there is no caster adjustment to counter-act that we drive on the lefthand side of the road here in Australia is the cause. They admit that the lefthand front wheel needs to be pushed forward and the righthand front wheel needs to be pulled back, as it is actually setup the opposite way around to suit lefthand drive cars.

They say as it is one of the first X5's in Australia with Adaptive Drive & Active Steer it is a new problem. So what happenned with all there testing, they forgot to test a righthand drive X5.

So they are going to do a couple of things once they have spoken to the techs in the USA and see if they can produce some bolts with a camber offset to put in the control arms and bushes and or alloy plates to pack the susupesion some how to give the same effect as castor adjustment.

So why did they not produce the X5 in the first place with castor adjustment, are they so penny conscious to save $20.00 a X5 or did it just slip through the cracks. Why send a car to Australia with a suspension setup to drive on the other side of the road.

Another thing they said was that they are going to see if there is different type of 20" tires that might have built-in camber offset to counteract the camber on our roads - I think that's up there with the fairies?

Anyway, gave them a week to fix the X5 or take it back as its just not a nice car to drive and I do nearly 700klm per week. Keeping a couple lbs psi on the steering wheel with your righthand all day does not make pleasant driving, not when the optioned up X5 costs nearly $140,000 AUD.

watrob · #8 07-10-2007, 01:25 AM

PS. The first righthand drive X5 E70 produced with Adaptive Drive & Active Steer was in the first week on May 07 which one of them was mine and probably the only one in Australia at present. Yes and there has been no testing done with the above combination, how's that.

Fastbuck · #9 07-10-2007, 01:54 AM

I don't have either of those options, but my RHD vehicle exibits zero pull whilst driving in the UK.

Satan1974 · #10 07-10-2007, 02:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fastbuck

I don't have either of those options, but my RHD vehicle exibits zero pull whilst driving in the UK.

Same here. If this is only a problem with active drive and active steering, then why is it being assumed it's a "caster" setting problem, when clearly it's the combination of active drive and active steering which seem to be causing it, as implied above?

To say that there is "no caster adjustment to counter-act that we drive on the lefthand side of the road" just doesn't sound like the real problem. If it were down to this, why do the active drive and steering make any difference, rather than the problem affecting _every_ RHD car?

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