DIY Steering Wheel Centering

diablo2112

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Greetings. I just installed a magnficient carbon wheel in our new 2021 3.0 Premium. This wheel has a center stripe, which revealed the steering wheel as delivered wasn't perfectly centered. This guide will show you a simple DIY procedure to recenter the wheel.

dYjIUaN.jpg


Here's the "center" position of our new wheel before we started. This was the neutral position of the steering wheel when driving straight down the highway.

GLeWV2U.jpg


This is easily corrected with a few tools in about 10 minutes. This guide walks you through a DIY method to center the wheel.

What we're going to do is simple: we're going to lengthen one side of the steering rod while shortening the other the exact same amount. This has the effect of keeping the toe setting the same, while moving the position of the steering wheel relative to the front wheels. It's very important that each side is moved the same amount: this keeps all the stock suspension settings the same, especially the front toe.

This can be done without jacking the car up and with 3 simple tools. Let's get started.

First, you need a 15mm open-end wrench, a T50 socket and ratchet, and a sharpie marker.

N5vu2y2.jpg


Perhaps the hardest part of this is figuring out which way to turn the steering rods. My wheel was "centered" slightly to the left. To recenter the wheel, the wheels needed to point just a bit more to the left. You'll see how this translates to the adjustments, below.

Now, turn your steering wheel all the way to the right, so you have access to the right-side front suspension. Look inside the front wheel, you'll see the suspension including the steering rack.

Note that the steering rack is in front of the spindle. That's pretty unusual, most cars have it behind. Lucky for us, it makes access pretty easy without a need to remove the wheel or put the car on jacks.

QTX28Lt.jpg


THIS PART IS CRITICAL. Use a sharpie to draw a line on the front portion of the tie rod. This is our reference to make sure we adjust each side the same.

sR1q5Gv.jpg


The tie rod is easily adjusted. You must first loosen the pinch bolt. Use a T50 socket and ratchet to loosen this, but don't remove it.

Juka93F.jpg


Now for the fun part, adjusting the rod. Both rods are threaded the same, "normal" direction. RIghty-tighty, lefty-loosey. As I need to move my wheels to the left, I will SHORTEN the rod on the right side. This means rotating the right-side tie-rod so that a quarter-turn moves the line I drew on the front to the top. This is clockwise rotation when looking at the tie rod ("righty tighty"), shortening the overall linkage by screwing the tie-rod into the tie-end.

NRlYz77.jpg


I adjust this rod with a 15mm open-end wrench so my line is now exactly on top. Try to be precise about this, you want the same amount of rotation on both sides. Once you've moved the rod, retighten the pinch bolt with your T50 socket. And, that's it for the right side!

We now repeat this procedure on the left side, with one important exception. We need to LENGTHEN the left side rod by 1/4 turn. The line you drew on the front WILL STILL MOVE TO THE TOP with a quarter turn. However, the rotation of the rod will be counterclockwise when looking at the tie rod from this position ("lefty loosey"), lengthening this tie rod by moving the tie-rod out from the tie-end.

Left side:

m4KcqO1.jpg


And, that's it! Moving the tie rods 1/4 of a turn on each side resulted in the steering wheel rim moving about 1cm for recentering purposes. This was just about perfect on my car, and the wheel is now nicely centered when Highway driving.

You'll likely need to move your wheel a different amount. Scale the amount of rotation of each tie rod by this value: 1/4 turn ~= 1 cm of rim movement. You may need to test-drive and iterate to get things perfect; this procedure doesn't take that long.

7PkcPYA.jpg


To summarize:
- if you need to move the center position from the LEFT to center, turn the rods so the line you drew on the front moves to the TOP.
- if you need to move the center position from the RIGHT to center, turn the rods so the line you drew on the front moves to the BOTTOM.

Hope this helps, it's actually pretty easy. Good luck!
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BA9092

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Love this! Thank you for posting, the photos and for the detailed clarifications.

I've had to do the steering wheel centering in almost all of my cars. However, this one was the first I've encountered where the tie rods are forward of the hub.
 

Kgsweb

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Thanks for the tip. My 2020 steering wheel was offcenter to the left just about as much as yours was. I've heard that several came from the factory that way. Maybe the same dude at the factory did the alignments on the ones that were off to the left. In his eyes, maybe the wheel was straight?

Anyway, I took mine to the dealer and after two attempts, they got it right. Its a curse having an eye that sees these minor imperfections.
 
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diablo2112

diablo2112

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Off-center wheels are fairly common. It's not a bad alignment that causes this, its just a reality with many alignment technicians. Some take extra care with things like water-levels to get the wheel perfect, but that's not the usual procedure. With many styles of steering wheel, you can't really tell if it's off by a few mm. As said above, some of us are cursed and notice these things. I've had to recenter just about every BMW steering wheel we've had the last 15 years.

And no, this DIY will not alter your alignment. As long as you follow the procedure here, nothing will change. As the guide says, if you're careful and you adjust each side the same amount, you'll retain all your suspension settings.
 
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BA9092

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My alignment tech even told me that I could eye-ball this if the steering wheel looks a bit off. He drove the car on local streets to make sure things were okay, but he said I may notice it on a straight, level highway.

He told me he centered the steering wheel as best he could before the alignment and didn't have to do too many adjustments. However, he did advise that if I notice the steering wheel's not perfectly centered (as things shift) to either bring it back or I could correct the toe myself on ether side (same mount) by doing 1/8th to quarter turn on each side in the same direction until it was satisfactory.

He said it as long as I made equal adjustments, it wouldn't affect any initial settings especially if we're talking less than half a turn of each rod as the wheel shouldn't be that far off center anyway. He said he does this to his own daily and track cars without putting them on the lift.
 

Limoncello

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I know this thread is old, but thank you for the write up. I just recently noticed that my steering wheel was slightly off center and its been bugging me. Now I got something to do this weekend.
 

FlynnZero

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Greetings. I just installed a magnficient carbon wheel in our new 2021 3.0 Premium. This wheel has a center stripe, which revealed the steering wheel as delivered wasn't perfectly centered. This guide will show you a simple DIY procedure to recenter the wheel.

dYjIUaN.jpg


Here's the "center" position of our new wheel before we started. This was the neutral position of the steering wheel when driving straight down the highway.

GLeWV2U.jpg


This is easily corrected with a few tools in about 10 minutes. This guide walks you through a DIY method to center the wheel.

What we're going to do is simple: we're going to lengthen one side of the steering rod while shortening the other the exact same amount. This has the effect of keeping the toe setting the same, while moving the position of the steering wheel relative to the front wheels. It's very important that each side is moved the same amount: this keeps all the stock suspension settings the same, especially the front toe.

This can be done without jacking the car up and with 3 simple tools. Let's get started.

First, you need a 15mm open-end wrench, a T50 socket and ratchet, and a sharpie marker.

N5vu2y2.jpg


Perhaps the hardest part of this is figuring out which way to turn the steering rods. My wheel was "centered" slightly to the left. To recenter the wheel, the wheels needed to point just a bit more to the left. You'll see how this translates to the adjustments, below.

Now, turn your steering wheel all the way to the right, so you have access to the right-side front suspension. Look inside the front wheel, you'll see the suspension including the steering rack.

Note that the steering rack is in front of the spindle. That's pretty unusual, most cars have it behind. Lucky for us, it makes access pretty easy without a need to remove the wheel or put the car on jacks.

QTX28Lt.jpg


THIS PART IS CRITICAL. Use a sharpie to draw a line on the front portion of the tie rod. This is our reference to make sure we adjust each side the same.

sR1q5Gv.jpg


The tie rod is easily adjusted. You must first loosen the pinch bolt. Use a T50 socket and ratchet to loosen this, but don't remove it.

Juka93F.jpg


Now for the fun part, adjusting the rod. Both rods are threaded the same, "normal" direction. RIghty-tighty, lefty-loosey. As I need to move my wheels to the left, I will SHORTEN the rod on the right side. This means rotating the right-side tie-rod so that a quarter-turn moves the line I drew on the front to the top. This is clockwise rotation when looking at the tie rod ("righty tighty"), shortening the overall linkage by screwing the tie-rod into the tie-end.

NRlYz77.jpg


I adjust this rod with a 15mm open-end wrench so my line is now exactly on top. Try to be precise about this, you want the same amount of rotation on both sides. Once you've moved the rod, retighten the pinch bolt with your T50 socket. And, that's it for the right side!

We now repeat this procedure on the left side, with one important exception. We need to LENGTHEN the left side rod by 1/4 turn. The line you drew on the front WILL STILL MOVE TO THE TOP with a quarter turn. However, the rotation of the rod will be counterclockwise when looking at the tie rod from this position ("lefty loosey"), lengthening this tie rod by moving the tie-rod out from the tie-end.

Left side:

m4KcqO1.jpg


And, that's it! Moving the tie rods 1/4 of a turn on each side resulted in the steering wheel rim moving about 1cm for recentering purposes. This was just about perfect on my car, and the wheel is now nicely centered when Highway driving.

You'll likely need to move your wheel a different amount. Scale the amount of rotation of each tie rod by this value: 1/4 turn ~= 1 cm of rim movement. You may need to test-drive and iterate to get things perfect; this procedure doesn't take that long.

7PkcPYA.jpg


To summarize:
- if you need to move the center position from the LEFT to center, turn the rods so the line you drew on the front moves to the TOP.
- if you need to move the center position from the RIGHT to center, turn the rods so the line you drew on the front moves to the BOTTOM.

Hope this helps, it's actually pretty easy. Good luck!
Very helpful, my new ECS wheel was driving me batty. I am off left about 6 mm.
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