Steering Mischief Managed - 2015 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk Long-Term Road Test

Edmunds.com

Steering Mischief Managed - 2015 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk Long-Term Road Test

A strategic tire rotation and a needed wheel alignment cured our 2015 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk's pull problem and has it tracking straight and true once more.

Read the full story here

s197gt

post a week from now: "2015 Jeep Renegade Trailhawk: Still pulls to the right."

J/K! Good work. We had a pull and slight steering wheel wobble in our BMW e90. I wrote a long post in bimmerforums about the steps I took to get rid of it. Had new control arms and a (stuck) tie rod replaced, road force balance, alignment, eventually a second alignment, and finally new tires ultimately solved the problem.

It can be so many things and it is interesting how often the tires can actually be at least a contributing factor.

thecardoc3

While the rear toe variation on the left rear would cause a thrust angle and result in the steering wheel not being centered, it would not cause wear on just that tire. The rear of the vehicle will track centered on that thrust angle and any wear would occur evenly on both rear tires.

As far as camber adjustments on the front go, there are aftermarket solutions for most of the cars out on the road today to bring alignment angles back into specification. Installation of these components that allow for adjustment that was not included from the factory is at an additional cost over the base alignment. Depending on the vehicle design the change can be made at the strut to the knuckle joint, or it can be done with offset mounts or ball joints (and more).

Where people sometimes get into trouble is they fail to directly measure SAI (steering axis inclination) which is the angle from the centerline of the top of the strut through the lower ball joint. Adjusting camber at the strut to knuckle connection can restore the camber angle but can change the included angle if the real problem was an issue with SAI. The problem with that is modern alignment machines basically guess at SAI and display it on the print-out. Measurement of that angle correctly requires additional steps that are usually not necessary and therefore skipped "to try and be price competitive" ( aka cheaper). Measuring SAI requires lifting the vehicle, locking the brakes, leveling the targets and then performing a caster swing that requires additional turning angle during the measurement as compared to just doing a caster measurement.

Even this basic work isn't as simple as many want to believe. It takes years for someone to encounter and have to work through enough problem child's to really be considered experienced. Even then there will always be another one that will be waiting to teach yet another lesson.

longtimelurker

First it pulled to the left during your trip to Detroit, just after your 7,500-mile service (where I suspect you had a tire rotation, although it doesn't say), then right again after the 20k mile service. Earlier, just after the car was hit from behind, you had expressed a wish for an alignment in case the other car hit a rear tire while submarining under the Renegade, and stated afterward that the alignment was fine...did you say that after hearing from the shop, or from seeing an actual printout of the alignment? Your excessive degree of positive toe is exactly the type of damage I would expect from that kind of impact, if such impact occurred. Hmmm...

Then, rather than an alignment being performed during the lengthy and uncoordinated dealer service at 14,803 miles, you folks accepted a rotation rather than your requested alignment, which seemed to cure the left-pull problem, but in reality just put off the problem to another day, and probably resulted in a second tire getting its tread ground away and increasing its conicity by that left-rear toe issue.

So after 10,000-odd miles of one kind of pull or another, you have gotten an alignment. Yes, lots of times one kind of pull or another is a proximate symptom of a tire issue, rather than an alignment issue, but other times, the tire issue was caused BY the alignment issue.

The lesson here is that the point of getting service is getting what needs to be done, done regardless of how long it takes or how much you're inconvenienced...not getting it done within a preconceived time frame and convenience level.

Nobody likes being screwed around by a shop that can't seem to get it together...but you can't let that cause you to take your eyes off the ball.

stever

@longtimelurker, in other words, the long term tester got driven and maintained just like 99% of the buying public drives and maintains their cars.

daryleason

I think @longtimelurker & @stever are alluding to something I was thinking. I have a feeling that, if it wasn't created by the accident, the accident might have made a slight issue already worse. What's telling is that this issue wasn't solved by an FCA Service Center, or a Repair Shop, but by an auto journalist (who, as common reactions to articles will have you know...know nothing about cars) working on it at home and then taking it to an alignment shop.

thecardoc3

daryleason said:

What's telling is that this issue wasn't solved by an FCA Service Center, or a Repair Shop,

Hmmm. Can't agree with you here. When someone brings a car into the shop and has a specific request for what they want, just what exactly should the shop do? On the one visit they wanted a road force balance performed and acted surprised when it didn't solve the issue. They only wanted an alignment later even though it was pointed out to them several times that the facts didn't support that diagnosis.

daryleason said:

but by an auto journalist (who, as common reactions to articles will have you know...know nothing about cars) working on it at home and then taking it to an alignment shop.

It's interesting that even now some of the real details are being overlooked. Yes a thrust angle will cause a steering wheel to be off center, but when that thrust angle is caused by the toe on one wheel, it does not cause wear on just that tire. The thrust angle that is created is the centerline of the total rear toe, so both tires on the rear wear exactly the same.

The end story here is if someone has a vehicle issue that is annoying them, tell the shop what the car is doing and let them go find it. If you go in and say you want an alignment, but don't tell the shop the car has a lead then you are likely to be disappointed. If the wheel is off center when driving straight down the road with your hands off of the wheel, then explain that is what you are concerned about. If the car has a lead one direction or the other and you have to steer to stay straight, then say so. If you try to diagnose and a problem and tell the shop what to do it isn't their fault if they do what you asked for if you were wrong.

FWIW they were told to cross rotate the tires right here on the forums each time the issue was raised. That is only one possible cause for the vehicle to have a lead, but its the easiest to rule in/out.

kirkhilles1

We just rented the Renegade over the weekend and man... what a silly, crappy product. As mentioned in other blog entries, the obsessive "Jeep" references are WAY BEYOND nice touches and are completely laughable. You see like 10 Jeep references within 5 minutes of being in the car. Every-freaking-where. This is not classy, this is like a group effort where everyone was told to include 5 Jeep references. Beyond that, leather was cheap, engine was not particularly good in any form and usable space is a joke. Two suitcases pretty much take up the entire cargo area. My wife best classified it as a "teenage girl's car". I couldn't imagine paying $25k for even this "Limited" model. The 2016 Civic EX-T is 100x the vehicle this is (probably more usable storage too).