Hi. I have just got my fiesta runaround back from my niece who had borrowed it for a few months. straight away I heard a loud squeaking from the front drivers side wheel arch area. Had the wheel off but can't see anything obvious , but what is obvious is that the wheel is closer to the rear of the arch instaed of central like the passenger side. I believe she hit a large pot hole at some point. Any advice on what she has damaged. the squeak happens slightly just by getting into the car and on full lock the wheel catches the arch surround at the rear.

first of all you should perform a visual inspection on the front left lower control arm and its bushings for any damage, you should also check the front subframe for any damage, if nothing is visually obvious then I guess performing a good wheel alignment will solve the issue.

let me tell you what are the main measurements and adjustments involved in the wheel alignment and what we can do and what we can't.

we have caster, camber , and toe angles ( as shown in pic ) 

caster is how many degrees the shock absorber is making with the vertical line drawn from the the strut and perpendicular to the ground ( and this is what you are looking at in you case since you say that the wheel is closer to the arch, meaning that the caster angle is out of specs here.

camber is the angle that the bottom of the wheel makes with a vertical line perpendicular to the ground.

and toe is angle the wheels are pointing at when your steering wheel is centered, toe in when the wheel point inwards, toe out when outwards.

generally speaking only the toe angle that can be adjusted, caster and camber angles are fixed and if there is any deviation out of specs then you should replace the affected suspension part.

regarding the caster, if the wheel alignement guy is clever enough, it can be adjusted a little bit if he knows what he is doing, this can be done by loosening the front subframe bolts a little bit, and then with the help of a hydraulic piston, he can push the subframe a little bit in the correct direction and then retighten the bolts again, this gives little fractions of a degree adjustment but can be very helpful.

keep us updated, if you would like to post a photo of wheel alignment before and after adjustment then we would be happy to share opinions 🙂 

good luck 🙂  

 

 

Hi Ahmed 1986  thanks for that info, however the alignment is a little mute at the moment until I have the wheel in it's central position so I would guess from the early part of your reply it is likely to be the subframe or the lower control arm or there mounts. Just visually the right  wheel is slightly toe out when the passenger left side is neutral which would go along with the right wheel being pushed back an inch or two.