Ford Figo steering is off-centred: What caused it & what's the solution

I tried driving the car on different roads just to be sure and noticed that the veering is constant.

BHPian AYP recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

Hello everyone,

For the past few days, I have observed that the steering of my car is off-centre to the left. In its new default position, the car starts to veer towards left and if I forcibly keep it at the centre, the car starts to veer towards the right. This causes me to keep correcting the steering constantly and leads to fatigue. I have captured this in the above video.

This behaviour wasn't noticed earlier. What could have caused this and what is the solution?

A few points-

• I upsized my wheels back in April (from 175s to 185s).
• I checked the behaviour of the car after ensuring the correct tyre pressure. The behaviour is still the same.
• I tried driving on the other side of the road and also on various other roads, this new behaviour is constant.

Request all the Figo and Aspire owners to check if this is observed in their cars.

Here's what BHPian SteeringWheel had to say about the matter:

Two reasons

Alignment

Did you get the alignment checked recently? When you hold the steering straight, it is veering to the right, this may be an alignment issue.

Steering sensor

Newer cars with electronic power steering and stability control have something called a steering position sensor which sometimes gets disturbed for reasons I'm unaware of. The EPS treats the new position as the centre and defaults to that position. In your case, it is defaulting to the left. In such cases, the EPS needs to be calibrated which can be done by the ASC by connecting their scanner to the OBD port. I'm currently facing the same issue in my Verna and I'll get it corrected when time permits. In my case, the car defaults to the left but when I keep the steering straight, it goes straight.

Here's what BHPian Mr.Boss had to say about the matter:

From the video, it looks like the car moves straight but the steering wheel is off-center. I couldn't notice the car drifting towards the left.

If this is the case, alignment must have been disturbed recently (pothole hit, etc). Get it checked before suspecting the steering components.

Here's what BHPian Jeroen had to say about the matter:

Steering wheel got it spot on in his post. The most likely cause is something with the alignment or steering sensor.

Please note these are completely independent of each other, but must both be set up correctly. If it is an alignment issue the sensor might need re-calibration as well, depending on what was wrong.

In fact on most modern cars with electric steering, resetting/re calibration of the sensor after alignment is part of the procedure and needs to be done no matter what.

So if you find a shop that can do the alignment make sure they also know how to reset/calibrate the sensor. Don’t let anybody tell you it’s not necessary or the electronics will figure it out themselves. It won’t.

There could be other reasons as well, but apart from checking tires and tire pressure, a full alignment check including the sensor is most likely to solve the issue. If you’re lucky the sensor just needs resetting. Very easy, but you need the right equipment.

Here's what BHPian arijitkanrar had to say about the matter:

We have a Figo and faced a similar problem recently.

As many have pointed out, it's most likely a combination of the wheel alignment and steering position sensor.

Recently during routine service at the Ford ASC, the technician carried out EPS calibration. Not that I asked for it, but they did it anyway. And as usual, these guys are too cool to do the job properly.

The procedure calls for the steering to be rotated completely to one side and then to the other side. This way the EPS software learns what are the extreme limits of the rotation and what would be the center. If the technician misses turning the steering wheel fully in either direction or both, the software has no way of knowing what would be the correct center position and can lead to this incorrect behaviour of the wheel.

This is exactly what happened. When I pointed it out my SA said it'll sort itself out and the EPS will learn the new center. He asked me to drive for a few days and it'll be fine.

I went back and drove for about a day but didn't like it at all.

Went back to the ASC and asked them to do the calibration again. That fixed the problem.

And on the topic of wheel alignment, I make sure that I never get an alignment done at the ASC. The machine at this particular ASC (JSP Ford, Kudlu gate, Bengaluru) is never properly calibrated. If my wheels are aligned at this center, the car always pulls left.

I went to an alignment center near my home and clicked a pic of the angles before they were corrected. You can see that both the left and right wheels are incorrectly pointed by almost equal amounts to the right. This points to incorrect calibration or procedure at the Ford ASC.

Since then I always refuse wheel alignment at the ASC. I get it done at the shop near my home which does a better job and costs slightly less compared to the ASC.

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