I was looking into where my front wheels were rubbing after putting some larger wheels on that  friend lent me to try. Turns out it was rubbing on the drivers side arch because that wheel sits about an inch further back than the passenger side wheel. 

 

Does anyone have any suggestions on what I should investigate first, it's not the wheels themselves. Could worn bushes cause this? My initial thought was that the wishbone could be bent but it's never had a bump or anything. 

Sorry to bump this post. Is anyone able to make any suggestions regarding this. I don't think the body or chassis is bent as surely that would have been noticed before when being MOTed or having tracking done. 

Edited 4 October, 20187 yr by Saint Jimi

you say never had a bump ?  have you owned it from new ?

 

somethings bent....pair of new lower arms would be cheapest to try, other than that get measuring with a good tape measure from a fixed point to say the arb mounts and so on , compare to both both sides or another car 

Could the ARB mount rubber have perished on one side?

It would have to be very badly worn, or even missing to make the difference of one inch.

 

If you can reach well under the car without raising it AND you have a smooth(ish) level floor to stand the car on, you could do a 'drop-test' to check alignment of chassis and components.

(1) Sweep the floor and stand the car on it

(2) Rub chalk on the floor under the major mounting points (Wishbone front and rear mounting points, lower ball joint mounting, ARB mountings -even subframe mountings. Now do the same with whatever 

      points that you can reach on the rear suspension.

(3) Using a decorators plumb line located in EXACTLY  the same place on each side of the car, drop the plumb line from each of the above mentioned mountings and make a pencil mark on the white chalk

      marks.

(4) Move the car away without rubbing out the marks.

(5) Measure between the frontmost and rearmost marks on the floor and mark the CENTRE position on the floor.

(6) Mark the centre line on the floor using either a chalk line, or a long straight piece of wood.

(7) Working from each of the pencil marks on opposite sides of the centre line, use a straight piece of wood or chalk line to again mark the floor (Example: for the front, mark from N/S/F wishbone mounting 

     to N/S/R wishbone mounting)

 

You should now have a lot of 'X' marks on the floor - the important thing being that they should all cross on the centre line, if they don't, it will be obvious just where the problem is.

 

Obviously, if your car is lowered, you would not be able to carry out the above without first going on a six week diet 🙂

 

Regards

Cheers for all the feedback. I've had it 14 years, I guess it could have had a knock or bump prior to me owning it but if that's the case I'd be disappointed in my self for not noticing this before. 

 

I've been thinking about possibilities and I recalled hitting a speed bump that I didn't notice on a night with poor visibility about a year ago, I'd forgotten about that. 

 

I guess for now I'll get underneath and start measuring, I'll probably try and do the suggested drop test in an effort to see how straight all points are. 

Thanks for the feedback guys. Once I got underneath in a pit I was able to determine that the off side arb mount was the culprit, so loosened it off a bit and got a lever bar on there while my helper did the bolts up again with some gusto. 

 

All good now but I've got some arb blocks on the way to try and reduce the chances of the mount working backwards again over time.