So I'm in a friend's workshop one day in 1991 doing a wheel alignment on my first Twin Turbo car and a mate of mine brings one of these in that he bought brand new. It's about the same age, less than 12 months old, with about 5,000 k's on it.
Seems it is pulling to the right, on the freeway, on suburban streets, at the drag strip, it always pulls to the right, from the day he bought it. Everyone has had a go at fixing it but it still pulls to the right, a couple of wheel alignment shops, the Holden Dealer he bought it from, tyre shop etc. We pop it on the wheel aligner, camber OK, Caster OK, toe OK, WTF is wrong with this thing?
So I pull out the trusty tape measure and measure from the centre of RHS rear wheel to the centre of RHS front wheel. Over to the LHS and measure it. FMD it is 18 mm shorter in the wheel base on the RHS than it is on the LHS. So I then measure the panel gaps with my trusty verniers (yes, I still have the dimensions);
LHS front guard to front of LHS door = 11mm.
RHS front guard to front of RHS door = 5mm.
LHS front door to front of LHS rear door = 10mm.
RHS front door to front of RHS door = 6mm.
LHS rear door to LHS rear gaurd = 9mm.
RHS rear door to RHS rear guard = 5mm.
Total 14mm shorter on the RHS compared to the LHS. The other 4mm, to make 18 mm, is in the location of the rear axle. The RHS wheel is more forward in the guard opening than the LHS.
Have you had an accident, no. No overspray, no signs of delivery accident damage repair. So we pop over to the Holden Dealer and have a chat to the service manager. After a couple of days he calls my mate and tells him that he has spoken to Holden and it is "Within Factory Tolerance". He calls Holden, rants and raves and eventually they tell him exactly the same thing, it is "Within Factory Tolerance".
Just for interest we measured up a few other VN's and they all had different panel gaps, all smaller on the LHS, none as bad as his, but none of them were "straight". Over the years I have done the same with panels gaps on lots of cars and Commodores from VB through to VS very often have noticeably disparate panel gaps.
Needless to say he traded it in a few months later.
On a modern 4 wheel laser based aligner that would show up as a Thrust Angle Alignment problem, as the rear axle line was not parallel to the front axle line. We didn't have that in 1991, all analogue back then.
Team First
