I have to turn my steering wheel to the right about 1/2 a centimeter to get the car straight. The car does not veer right, it just seems the steering wheel is out of alignment. I have some questions.

Is bad alignment the cause of this? and if it is bad alignment, will this minor alignment problem damage the car? Does Scion give free alignment for the first 1000 miles?

It does not really bother me, but if it is damaging the car or if I can get a free alignment, I will have the work done.

 

I thought I was the only one who noticed that. I have to do that on my xA too.

 

This topic has been brought up before. . . yeah my dealer took care of it no charge, as new cars should not have alignment problems.

Some said it was a TSB, some said it was due to transport, I dunno the cause, but the dealer fixed it in less than two hours. . .

 

I think I may take my car in to get looked at as well. My wheel needs to be corrected left to get the car to go straight, and also pulls to the right a slight amount. It's done this since I brought it home.

 

i had the same prob........ took my car to the dealer........ the b!tches didnt hook it up to the machine they took it on some roads and were like its the road not your car....... i was ____ed i was like whatever my car always pulls to the right if i let the steering wheel go even on a fresh paved road!

So im gonna take it to get a "second opinion" and if they say the alignments off.... they're gonna hear from me.. I didnt spend all this money on a car to have the alignment go bad in a month sorry.....not gonna fly with me...... its not like im asking for a new tranny lol

 

hey my car veers right alittle too

 

Same problem here on my xB, took it back to the dealer and they claimed they set the front toe, but it still does the same thing. Its funny because they told me at first they couldn't find the alignment settings because the car was so new. I don't know where they ended up getting them from, but I have a feeling it wasn't done right. Every time I took it back after that (twice; even after talking to someone at Scion and having them tell me other people had reported the problem) they gave me some BS excuse like it was caused by torque steer or the slant of the road. I even went through arbitration with NCDS and they denied my claim. I pretty much just gave up on having it fixed and live with it. If I do find someplace that tells me there was something wrong all along, I will be rather ____ed. Toyota would definitely be getting a call from me.

 

possibly it is torque steer...

if you guys have manual transmissions, car will veer a bit to the right when the torque is kicking in.

is normal on fwd cars

 

Roads are sloped to the right. A very slight pull is the cause of a slope in the road to prevent water from pooling in the middle of the road.

 

vanberge: Its noticeable while cruising at highway speed, it has nothing to do with torque steer.

technetium: I know a lot of roads are sloped to the right but some aren't. My wheel is off center on roads that are pretty much flat. If it had to do with the road slant, the wheel would be tilted the other way if I was in driving on a road that sloped to the left, like the fast lane of a 4 lane hwy for example. The road would be slanted to the left so rain could drain into the median as opposed to traveling accross all 4 lanes of traffic to drain into the right shoulder. On a road like this, in my car, the wheel is pretty much on-center when you'd think it would be turned a bit to the right to keep the vehicle tracking straight when the road is sloping to the left.

I figure since lots of other people's cars seem to do it, I won't worry about it, it is just a slight annoyance because I never noticed the issue in my Celica, Integra or Cavalier. All of which were also FWD but had more powerful motors and would therefore be subject to more torque steer if that were the cause. It seems like if it were the roads, I would have noticed that long beforehand because I have been driving on the same roads since I got my license.

 

uhh... torque steer.... LOL.. thats funny ____.. "yeah, your monstrous 105 ft/lb of torque kicked in and messed up your alignment"... i love hearing that kinda crap from dealers. one time a service manager told me that a crankcase breather filter caused my transmission to go out.. bwahahaha.. sorry, just had to laugh at some of the excuses they come up with.

 

have you tried swapping the front tires.. left side to right side.. and right side over to the left side.. see if the pull changes direction.. it sure sounds like some of these OEM Bridgestone RE92's are junk.. flats here and there, other's blow out, and who knows what else..

so swap the front tires from side to side and see if that helps.. the torque on the lugs is 76 ft-lbs in case you wanted to torque down the lug nuts correctly..

see if swapping the tires changes your steering problem..

 

Never thought of that, but I guess it's worth a shot. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

I think you're right. From what people have said about these tires on tirerack.com these tires really suck.

 

If the steering wheel is just off center a little bit the dealer should adjust that no problem. If the car is actually pulling to one side its most likely to much(or to little) Camber or Toe on one side of the car. Also remember that your riding on 17" tires and being there 215 in width your tires can sometimes track the imperfections of the road and seem like ur car is pulling and out of alignment when its actually not.