My car is pulling to the right and I thought it was because of a bad tires, so I swap them around , but it still pulls, and Just a few minutes ago I took it to get the alignment checked and it looks ok. I don't know what could be causing the pull, any Ideas on what could be causing it?


heres a scan of the print out.

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does it happen while your actually driving or while your braking? its possible one of your calipers are sticking (though I'd imagine that would cause noise)

 

my caliper stuck together in my eclipse and i didn't hear any noise

 

it could also be the roads your in, alot of roads tend to slope down to the right for drainage issues and such

if alignment is in spec, i think the roads might be your problem

 

^ good point. Maybe drive around a bit and see if the car pulls to a different direction if you're on the other side of the road or go to different streets than your used to

 

and also, your car is supposed to pull to the right so that if you were to fall asleep at the wheel, you would gradually roll off the road instead of into oncoming traffic.

AND you might have uneven tire pressure.

but how much does it pull to the right? is the steering wheel off center when your driving straight? if you take your hand off the wheel while driving, does it pull sharply or violently right, or just gradually drift right?

 

drifting with the slope of the road is normal,with cold temps the air pressure in tires will go down causing cars to follow the low tire.....check your air pressure and make sure they all area full to the correct psi and even all the way around.

 

my car pulled to the left a bit but alignment was spot on but then i checked the front left tire and it was the tire pressure. The front tire had been fixed before when it had a nail in it, so I guess it was very slowly leaking over time. have any of your tires been fixed?

 

well, I checked tire pressure and it's the same on both sides. Even on a flat road that doesn't slop it pulls. I have to hold the steering wheel harder than normal to keep it going staight, but one thing that made me think it was the tires is that it started as soon as i put on some falken azenis.

 

thats strange thought that even after swapping the tires around it still does it. See if you have a friend that has different tires maybe and put them on? Its a long shot but if the tires are causing it then that would help that. I can't see any other reason why it would be pulling.

 

yeah, it's weird. I' ll ask my friend to let me borrow hes stock wheels, see what it does.

 

it should be normal if your car pulls to the right slightly. i just noticed that too and got my alignment fixed recently. at first i thought it wasnt normal but it is. its also because of road crown and from factory it pulls to the right. my friends 350Z and 09 Civic Si do the same as well.

 

drift is one thing, pull is when you have to actively steer against what the car wants to do.


No, pulling is NOT normal, and the excuse dealerships tell people about "all cars are set up as a safety feature to pull to the right" is a can of poop No car pulls,
there are crowns on the road that cause the car to drift but that's it. And drift is defined as 5-6 seconds the car gently begins to go in that direction.

The pull the OP has doesn't look like it's coming from the suspension according to the scan of the aligmnet print out. It's time to begin examining the wheels and tires. Have the technician (at the dealer or tire shop) spin the wheel on the tire balancer and watch the tread. Also check the tread depth of the tires from inner to outer. I bet you might find an odd wear pattern. That can cause pull. The tC's suspension is very sensitive to tire issues one small difference I've found is all it takes to upset it. very picky.

so check that, and please don't believe people telling you pull is normal. My tC doesn't pull at all. So yours doesn't have to either.

 

Its pulling because of your alignment.
Both you caster and camber are making you car pull to the right.
A car can be within specs and still pull.
Caster cannot be adjusted but camber can.
You can adjust you camber to compensate for the pulling of the caster.

 

As 05TX said (he is correct)...

Your alignment settings, post-alignment, are such that you would certainly have a bit of drift to the right. Specifically, the camber/caster on the left is higher, meaning that tire is BARELY more forward and leaning more "inwards".

This could have come from normal variables in suspension installation (if aftermarket), or by hitting a huge bump in the road. Do you have aftermarket parts? Did you install them?

 

trd shocks and hotchkis springs and yeah i did the install.

 

Could you please elaborate on this, because I have been having the same problem (except pulling to the left)as the OP. It started right after a suspension install. I intalled Tokico shocks myself.

 

torque steer?

 

Alrighty...

First off... the big bump in the road. A car hitting a bump in the road will experience impulse forces of thousands of lb-feet per second, which can easily knock off alignment settings which are based on the orientation of screws and adjustable devices, no matter how firmly they're set. Hit one big enough, and you can bend the frame/firewall into which the suspension is bolted (note the 3 screws on top of suspension tower).

Normal variables in suspension installation---
This one's a lot more subjective, and the only thing I can provide you with is hypotheticals.

1) Perhaps the nuts on top of the assembly were tightened in a different order than originally specified, leading to a slight lean forward, leading to higher caster, and then a pull to one side. This is easy to visualize when you consider the shock/strut as the radius of a large circle, where very very minute changes in angle at the center (top of strut) translates to more distance travelled at base of strut. | vs. / , very crudely.

The correlation is when you tighten your lugnuts on the wheels. Though you can't achieve a "star pattern" with the 3-bolts at the top, if you tighten one side in one direction, and the other in another, then it's feasable you could increase the difference in caster.

2) Perhaps there's a difference in tolerances for the construction of the spring itself. If one spring is slightly longer than another, then this would be a result, since weight transfer would be off.

3) Perhaps it was installed on an uneven surface, and the tightening of everything back up translated into an uneven installation.

4) *** Likely **** When installing the TRD springs, it specifically tells you to note the position of a groove in plate at the top of the strut, where the top of the coil actually fits into. This position needs to be consistant with how the factory spring is installed. If it were to be rotated say, 180*, then you would end up with unequal overall lengths of the suspension unit, having one side longer than the other. This can result in bigger caster, and therefore, turning.

Sorry I can't be more clear at the moment, but I'd have to pull up the install guide to explain it better.

5) Leaving parts out, such as little O-rings, etc... which sometimes DOES happen, and tough to quantify.

6) Worn out shock on one side... which leads to under-compression of the spring at rest, and therefore, uneven suspension and turning.

7) Damage to the bolts used for alignment. Those things are hard to get out of there.

... etc. etc..

Just naming possibilities.

 

^Thank you.

So if it is an installation error, would getting it re-aligned most likely alleviate the problem?