I took my friend's 2009 Fit Base to a local independent tire shop for a front brake job and while there, decided to have an alignment performed during the same visit. At the time, the car had nearly 45,000 miles on it and had been driven by many people. As a result, I was quite surprised that the alignment was still near perfect.

Here are the results to the alignment. The shop used a Hunter ProAlign machine, which is a less-sophisticated version of WinAlign system used by many big-name tire shops.



The Fit's suspension setup consists of a simple MacPherson strut setup and a twist-beam rear. More info about the setup can be found here. However, a twist-beam rear suspension means there are no factory adjustments for the rear toe or rear camber.

As shown by the printout, the LR toe as slightly out of range, most likely due to a recent accident in that area. I was lucky that the alignment tech was automatically willing to loosen the rear twist-beam assembly and "wiggle it" in an attempt to try and get the toe back in spec. We loosened and retightened bolts number #8 in this picture:



On the car, it is the bolt with blue paint:



According to the printout, this was enough to get the rear toe to a more acceptable setting. The thrust angle is now also closer to 0-- I will get the exact value soon, but I remember it being very, very close to 0. So, if your rear toe is just slightly out-of-spec, this may be worth a try.

Also, I find it interesting that the front toe was set to 0.05-- which is a slight amount of toe-in. Is this common practice for fwd cars? According to the tech, the main reason why he adjusted the front tie-rods was to center the steering wheel per the Hunter WinToe software. After the adjustment, the steering wheel feels just a hair off center and the car feels a little less stable, but it could just be in my head.

Overall, I think it was a good alignment. Whether or not the alignment was truly needed though, is something I am not sure about. What do you guys think? Any changes you guys would recommend for next time?

 

With the "after" specs you show, the steering wheel will be slightly off center when driving straight; your front toe is equal at +.05, your rear is not equal side-to-side. If the tech performing the alignment had the wheel perfectly centered when the alignment was done your wheel should be off just enough to steer out of the rear toe. It may feel odd for a bit while the tire shape wears into the new settings, you may find cross-rotating the tires may help the wheel centering and the odd feeling.

FWIW,

B

 

Interesting, thanks. Cross rotating is out of the question because the Pilot Exalto A/S tires are directional.

I don't know if the steering wheel was perfectly centered when the alignment was done. The front toe adjustments were done using the Hunter winalign software so no steering wheel holder was needed, or used. Wouldn't the Hunter software compensate for the state of the rear toe adjustments and make appropriate recommendations for front toe adjustments so that the steering wheel will be straight?

The tech did mention that before the alignment, the steering wheel was slightly off-center though I never noticed it.

 

i think the fit is pathetic for not having camber/castor tinkering.

However, the toe re-setting for the rear is interesting....

just loosen and re-tighten?

 

I will try to find me alignment sheet, but I had my car aligned about 2 months ago and it yielded the same results. Although both sides were toed and a little bit more, but the tires wore fine?

 

Interesting read so far guys. Thanks for posting.

 

Here are my alignment results. I'm going to try the above and see if it helps ^^

 

Interesting info.
Subscribed to thread.

 

Hmm my LR toe has always been off on my black car -_-

 

Just in case someone is still interested, I tried this with no results. Toe on the rear is still the same, idk how it even happened. Tires on the rear are wearing perfectly fine.

 

I posted my concern about toe problems here: https://www.fitfreak.net/forums/2nd-...-off-help.html

maybe this time a solution can be found... subscribed!!!

 

Did your tires wear funny? I had 13,000 miles on mine before rotation and they wore perfect. If the toe is really off as much as the sheet says they should be butchered.

 

Sorry it didn't work for you. Did you loosen the bolt on both sides? For me it was enough to give a couple hundredths of a degree which was enough to bring it back into spec.

 

Loosened both sides, and it didn't change at all.

 

the rear toe before vs. after you unbolted the rear only changed microscopically

how much of that change is due to the way the sensors were mounted on the wheel, the settling of the rear suspension between readings, deviation of the alignment rack's readings, or a little bump/groove on one of the tires?

i've gotten more variance by just bringing my car into different alignment racks at different shops, or bringing my car into the same shop twice. a change of 0.07 degrees and 0.03 degrees is practically nothing, really.

 

the front toe changed between readings too, but you didn't mention anybody doing any adjustments on the front - did they? i have to remain skeptical about all of this haha

 

I wonder what all those 180s and 360s on dry pavement have done to my rear toe. Of course in truth i probably don't care