Yesterday after having my alignment done at Les Schwab all seemed well. The next morning the slip light came on just as I began going 35 mph something I have not done on the very short drive home after the alignment. At the first stoplight the incessant beeping and the light went out, only to start again when I accelerated past 40 mph. This did not continue all day but stopped about 10 miles later, or 30 minutes. It has continue doing this every morning for the past three. I’m very excited about this because it is a problem that I have never had to repair in the over 600,000 miles that I’ve driven my 2005 I call Electra. I’ll let you know what I find out, however, if anyone has any insights they want to share I would appreciate them. iPhone ?
Vehicle alignment CANNOT cause this, but you are 100% correct that an off-center steering wheel can! Most shops DO NOT properly re-center the steering angle sensors after an alignment.
Newer really tested it on a Prius but at-least on Audi A4 bad aliment could cause this slip light to come on at speed. But anyways steering wheel being on center is part of a wheel alignment and so could the steering zero point calibration be. So in that sense those being wrong is a bad wheel aliment.
Do you understand why that is? You are confusing the procedure and the result. "Wheel" alignment has nothing what-so-ever to do with centering of the steering wheel or steering angle sensor. Sure, when toe-in is adjusted as part of a total vehicle wheel alignment procedure, it can and often does cause the SAS to be off. This is not because of the vehicle wheel alignment itself, but because of HOW it was performed. Put another way, performing a vehicle wheel alignment SHOULD NOT affect the SAS and improper procedures are almost assured to.
No I'm not confusing these two. Wheel alignment can mean procedure or result. If a steering wheel is not straight after wheel alignment it's not a good wheel alignment. So in that sense it's a part of wheel alignment. If the steering wheel was straight before wheel alignment and wheel alignment is done right of course it won't effect steering angle sensor. Think about this. If a car comes into a wheel alignment with steering wheel not straight and you do the wheel alignment and while at it also correct the steering wheel to be straight. Then putting the steering wheel straight was part of a wheel alignment. After that you might have to do the zero point calibration if it was calibrated with the wheel not straight.
Some good input I’ve been driving it for a few weeks now noticing how it performs and I realized I should fill in some info. When I replaced the engine in 2018 I had trouble reconnecting the steering linkage. This made the steering wheel angle off ( 11:00 not 12) I drove it this way and finally took it in for alignment. That’s what started the Slip problem. I suppose my smart nice person solution of having the alignment mechanic fix the problem I created was my first mistake. Of course my second was not giving you all the information. iPhone ?
05preeUs I had incorrectly connected the steering linkage back in 2017 drive it since then with the steering wheel at 11:00. The shop centered the wheel when they did the work and the problem started. iPhone ?
A caution: the steering angle sensor is an input to the vehicle stability control, and yes, having the VSC know what sensor reading is 'zero' is useful for the VSC to do its fancy stuff ... but if the steering linkage was at one point mechanically reassembled off center, changing some numbers inside the skid ECU isn't going to change that. There is an important mechanical relationship to establish first, where the steering wheel has equal travel to the left and the right from the point where the steering rack is centered and the car drives straight without the tie rod lengths having to be adjusted more than 1½ mm different from each other. If that mechanical relationship isn't established, somebody's going to have to undo that linkage and put it together the right way first, and then let the ECU work out where zero is.
