Hi all, I have a 2005 mk2 ford focus and yesterday I took it to the garage to have the wheel alignment adjusted, thanks to all the potholes in the road (I think the council should be paying for this myself, but that's another story). When driving the car home I noticed that the steering wheel was set to the left when driving in a straight line. When I straightened the steering wheel, the car moved to the right, very frustrating!!! I couldn't go back to the garage cos it was at the end of the day and I was the last customer. Now I won't be able to go back to the garage for another week as I'm at work.

Is there any way that I can straighten the steering wheel myself, without altering the tracking and wheel alignment that has already been done? By taking the steering wheel of and re-setting it to dead straight?

Any advice would be much appreciated :)

Hi all, I have a 2005 mk2 ford focus and yesterday I took it to the garage to have the wheel alignment adjusted, thanks to all the potholes in the road (I think the council should be paying for this myself, but that's another story). When driving the car home I noticed that the steering wheel was set to the left when driving in a straight line. When I straightened the steering wheel, the car moved to the right, very frustrating!!! I couldn't go back to the garage cos it was at the end of the day and I was the last customer. Now I won't be able to go back to the garage for another week as I'm at work.

Is there any way that I can straighten the steering wheel myself, without altering the tracking and wheel alignment that has already been done? By taking the steering wheel of and re-setting it to dead straight?

Any advice would be much appreciated :)

Hi Paul,

You could remove the steering wheel and straighten it,

A bit of bother removing the wheel and risk of air bag deployment in the process,

But if you could wait to return to the garage I'm sure they can re-adjust the tracking while keeping the wheel straight.

I've removed a steering wheel before to fit a boss kit with racing wheel,

And one bit of advise is;

If removing the wheel, remove the centre nut, then put it back on by 1 rotation

prior to pulling the steering wheel from the cog,

The nut prevents the steering wheel from coming off completly and bursting your lip lol

I didn't have the nut in place when pulling and burst my lip with the steering wheel.

Here is a video on steering wheel removal

http://m.youtube.com/index?&desktop_uri=%2F#/watch?v=0zmz2EBBoAA

Rather shoddy practice them not straightening the wheel for you.

A wonky wheel is just wrong and imo is a distraction.

Make sure your key is in the second position in the ignition So that if for some reason u inter fear with the air bag u won't have to go to ford to get the code read and the airbag light turned off as I did when replacing my steering wheel and they charge me £90.00 just a little tip my friend

Search online for hunter pro align in your area and take it to them to have the job done properly, don't remove the wheel as the steer ahead angle is off set on the steering rack and could make handling of the car worse.

Cheers for the advice guys.

@ Lenny: when you remove the steering wheel, does the boss have toothed edges (around the outside) where the steering wheel connects to the car, in order for the wheel to be rotated and adjusted? I used to own a Mini city and it was a case of undoing a bolt and re-aligning it straight using the toothed edges of the shaft for the steering wheel. (I hope this makes sense )

Cheers for the advice guys.

@ Lenny: when you remove the steering wheel, does the boss have toothed edges (around the outside) where the steering wheel connects to the car, in order for the wheel to be rotated and adjusted? I used to own a Mini city and it was a case of undoing a bolt and re-aligning it straight using the toothed edges of the shaft for the steering wheel. (I hope this makes sense )

Yes that's correct mate,

The steering shaft was a cog lots of teeth,

The boss kit slide over this just like the steering wheel does.

Then the sports steering wheel bolted to the boss kit.

I've never removed the focus steering wheel though

But I imagine not much has changed.

Don't remove the wheel to try and straighten it, chances are it won't line up anyway but your risk damaging the clock spring for the airbags and horn.

The garage who done the tracking should have used a device to lock the steering wheel straight ahead before setting the car up.

Thanks stef123 I have called them now, they're gonna look at it this afternoon. You are right, this should have been sorted when the tracking was done in the first instance.

On 3/31/2013 at 11:45 AM, Stoney871 said:

Rather shoddy practice them not straightening the wheel for you.

A wonky wheel is just wrong and imo is a distraction.

Worse imo is the steering wheel not being in front of you., which was the case with a Ford Focus I tried 5 years ago. Have Ford corrected that yet? (It was to one side, forget which).