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Your help, please!



Okay, here I go again with my little uneducated ramblings...
I hopped in the Coupe yesterday, and, lo-and-behold... the car was going
sideways down the road, skittering this way and that on every single
irregularity it hit! Did I mention that I allowed my friend to drive my
car the night before? Well, he says he didn't do anything (read: hit
anything)... Since it was Saturday, and Rietzl's service dept. was
closed, I took the car to a wheel/tire store just to have them put it up
on the alignment rack to tell me excatly how big of a bump my friend
says he didn't hit. Here are the results: (no components bent or broken)
(Chassis alignment jig results; all measurments in degrees)

		Left Front									Right Front
|ACTUAL|SPECIFIED RANGE |					|ACTUAL|SPECIFIED RANGE |
| -2.5 |-1.3 <----> -0.3|		CAMBER		|-1.6  |-1.3 <----> -0.3|		
| 1.6  | 0.9 <----> 1.9 |       CASTER		| 2.2  | 0.9 <----> 1.9 | 
|-0.66 |0.00 <----> 0.17|		 TOE        |-1.02 |0.00 <----> 0.17|

					
							|ACTUAL|SPECIFIED RANGE |
			CROSS CAMBER	| -0.8 |-0.5 <----> 0.5 |
			CROSS CASTER	| -0.6 |-0.5 <----> 0.5 |
			TOTAL TOE		|-1.68 |0.00 <----> 0.33|

		Left Rear									Right Rear
|ACTUAL|SPECIFIED RANGE |					|ACTUAL|SPECIFIED RANGE |
| -1.5 |-1.3 <----> -0.3|		CAMBER		|-2.4  |-1.3 <----> -0.3|		 
| 0.06 |0.08 <----> 0.25|		 TOE        |-0.78 |0.08 <----> 0.25|

							|ACTUAL|SPECIFIED RANGE |
			TOTAL TOE		| 0.85 |0.17 <----> 0.50|

Does anybody see anything above that would lead them to beleive that my
car isn't exactly "handling right"??? Specifically, EVERY measurment is
off, except for left front caster... aggghhh! So let's recap- the car
handled great the day BEFORE my friend took it out, yet handled like 
*&$% the day after. Ingenious deductions, anyone? My friend swears he
hit nothing, and I beleieve him. He however heard a thump, which I heard
the next day as well. The car thunked twice as I left the parking lot of
the local theatre, and once when I was backing out of the garage. Any
ideas? The sound seems to be coming from the rear, maybe the diff
mounts?
The car will go in to the dealer tomorrow for a full alignment, maybe
they will be able to shed some light as to why the coupe has
inadvertantly likened itself to a Chevy Citation with bent tie rods...
front and rear...

BTW- I had specifically asked to have -1° of camber over spec in front
and -0.5° of camber over spec in rear when it was aligned two months
ago...

TIA
-Ramana

PS> as Hans Stuck has said, "I used to slide around curves so much, that
people said I had more bugs on the side of my car than on the front!"
Unfortunately, this similer trait that I have acquired is wholly
UN-glamorous (and undesired for that matter)...

*************************************************
* Ramana Lagemann		 mailto:elmool@tiac.net	*
* Cohasset, MA					1990 Coupe Q	*
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