I have a new 2 week old Prius 4. So far I love it. I've put about 600 miles on it. This past weekend I spent a decent amount of time on the freeway and noticed an issue with my steering. I'm pretty sure it is an alignment issue but I wanted to see if any body else had this on theirs. The car tracks straight. When I let go of the wheel the car goes dead straight but...the steering wheel is a bit off center turn slightly to the left. If I hold the wheel and turn the steering wheel right to exactly straight the car will go right. It's like they they aligned the car with the steering wheel slightly off center. Does this make sense? Any insight would be great.
My wheel is also off center by a couple of degrees from new. Please let us know if it is an easy dealer fix. In general I try to avoid going there as I work in a tech services capacity, and I know that a lot of our problems can be made worse when attempting a simple adjustment . That's partly why I chose one of the most reliable cars made.
Once they open the steering wheel up, it's a simple screw type adjustment. They loosen the screw, adjust the wheel, and them tighten the screw back down. Should take them less than 15 minutes, once they start, and you can likely wait around for this.
When the vehicle is on the alignment rack, the steering wheel is centered by hand and locked into place. The toe is then set by adjusting the tie rods. Finally, the zero point adjustment is checked and adjusted if necessary. However, there seems to be a quirk in some 2010 Prius, such as mine, where after all adjustments are made, the wheel is still slightly off center to the right. No biggy!!
I think Duffasaurus is correct, this is probably an alignment issue easily fixed by adjusting the toe on each side. But the car should have a complete 4 wheel alignment which Toyota will pay for during the first year. I had the same problem with my Gen2. Sometimes cars are knocked out of alignment during shipping, they don't exactly handle them with kid gloves when loading and offloading, etc.
You get 1 alignment adjustment within the first year or 12,000 miles w/ reason to believe it's off. This would be a good cause to have it checked under this warranty clause.
If they follow the Toyota shop manual it won't be. They start by measuring how off center it is while driving in a straight line, then adjust the tie rod ends to correct that specific error. Your experience and Toyota's masking tape and ruler method sounds like maybe a straight alignment forward rack job doesn't get it right for some reason.
This is real common, I just bought a new Lexus and the steering wheel is slightly off towards the left. They are going to adjust it at my 1,000 mile check.
