So i take my 04 VDP to the dealer for an oil change, alignment and tire rotation done about a week ago. By the way I had no idea that it was so expensive to rotate four tires on a Jag. At any rate, everything went fine until I was driving recently and noticed that the car wasn't driving straight at all. After taking the car there to be aligned from pulling right, now it is pulling left. So I venture back tomorrow for them to "correct the problem" as the tech put it. Hopefully at no charge. Any ideas as to how they could have not gotten it right to begin with? I mean an alignment is pretty straight forward..........right?

 

It's hard to say where they went wrong. Does it pull under all conditions/speeds?

They might've flat-out made a mistake on the settings.

Sometimes "pull" is caused by the tires themselves so IF they rotated the tires from side-to-side it can simply change the direction of the problem.

The alignment settings are usually tweaked a bit to compensate for road crown. They could've gone a bit too far... or perhaps your driving includes some non-crowned roads?

Cheers
DD

 

Alignments on your car are fairly straight forward but as doug mentioned you could have radial pull in one of the tires. I have the latest hunter alignment system here at work. I did my own alignment on my 05 about a year ago. I found it interesting that the specs are different from left to right. Not sure why. If i remember correctly it was the camber setting. I also had to do it with the car running so the suspension would stay stable and not move up or down. I wouldn't pay to have it corrected again or tires rotated back. The tech should have noticed it on a test drive

 

A Jaguar tech code-named "Brutal" says that there were some bad specs in the alignment machines. This was corrected but apparently some dealers haven't posted the corrections. Maybe the problem?

 

mystery solved! I will have to check my machine on monday. We had an update last month so it probably solved the problem. I set the camber equal on both sides and the car drove straight. No abnormal tire wear in 10k mi. Just recently started drifting to the left so may be due for another alignment.

 

Sorry it took so long to reply to all. I took the car back and they found that it did need another alignment, at no charge of course. I found this to be wierd because this is a World Class automobile. everything should be perfect everytime. Maybe that is expecting a little much, but out of all the cars that I have owned, I am a little taken back by Jaguar service. Trust me there is nothing wrong with the car it"s build quality is remarkable. Routine stuff should be routine ya know? Oh well just ranting. Car is fixed and all is well. Now on to ordering replacement brakes for the fronts in a couple weeks, those boys are pretty low!.