Help, problems with steering/handling!

[Y2KGT]

When your wheels are in a toe out position that means that they slightly steer away from each other when your wheels are centered. A toe out condition would make your car twitchy, or "awful light and skittish" as you described.

All cars should come from the factory with a slight toe in alignment. That means that the wheels slightly steer toward each other when they are centered. That is what keeps your car in a straight line when you let go of the wheel.

This is kinda hard to explain without a graphic illustration, but I will attempt to try with a text illustration. The printed result ended up looking screwy and crude (after a few edits )...so see if you can make sense of what's in the code block below. Assume the slashes, "\" and "/", are your front tires at centerline, and the pipes, "|", are your rear tires. Also, assume we are looking at the car from the top.

-----------------------------
                FRONT OF CAR
TOE OUT ->          \  /

REAR TIRES ->       |  |
                REAR OF CAR
-----------------------------
                FRONT OF CAR
TOE IN ->           /  \

REAR TIRES ->       |  |
                REAR OF CAR
-----------------------------

Hope that helps some. I don't claim to be a suspension expert (I'm far from it actually), but with my limited knowledge pointed to this as a logical explanation to your problem.

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2000 GT -- Black, 5sp, Mach460, Bassani CatBack & X-Pipe, MAC Cold Air, 70mm TB, Tri-Ax Shifter
1966 Mustang Coupe -- Tahoe Turquoise, Pony Int, A-Code, C4 Auto
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scott@pearland.com

[This message has been edited by Y2KGT (edited 04-20-2001).]