Scott,
The stock Tiger rear track is a couple of inches narrower than the
front, so unless someone has made some significant changes (oddball
wheel combination or spacers?) the front is wider than the rear, not the
other way around. This arrangement in general does make the car less
prone to understeer, but shouldn't by itself make the car track
erratically. You can (and probably should, eventually) take the car to a
good alignment shop, but there are a bunch of things you can do yourself
to assess the situation:
1. Check the toe-in - you can do this with a tape measure and a helper.
Sensitive steering can be caused by having toe-out on the front wheels.
2. Check the caster, either using a caster gauge or by eyeballing it.
Having too little caster will definitely make the steering very twitchy.
3. Jack up the front end, put the frame on jackstands, and first inspect
the inboard mounts for the lower control arms (on the crossmember) very
carefully. Verify that the nuts on the fulcrum pins are tight, and that
the fulcrum pins aren't cracked. If there's anything funny going on
there it's a very serious problem. Then jack it up again and put the
jackstands on the outer ends of the lower control arms so the suspension
is loaded as it would normally be. Grab the wheel/tire and try to move
it inboard and outboard (at the top of the tire), and wiggle the tire
side to side to see if there's any play in the steering or the upper
control arm pivots or balljoints. On my Tiger the upper balljoints were
no longer a press-fit in the upper control arm when I got it from the
PO.
Other thoughts: If the aluminum spacers for the crossmember were left
out or installed backwards (was the crossmember rebuilt?), it would
definitely reduce the caster significantly.
Good luck,
Theo Smit
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