Transit pulling to the left

Bottom ball joint, very common failure on transits. Get it checked PDQ, its not funny if it drops out while driving.

A friend went to a fancy 4 wheel alignment place with his Peugeot and then on a 400 mile weekend trip that same evening. The car was all over the road on the motorway, had no grip in corners and by the time he got there he could already see scrubbing on the tyres. He made it back, brought it round and you could see the toe out by eye. He took it back, they repeated the exercise and it was exactly the same. He said it felt like driving on ice. He brought it round again and I set up a couple of fixed points and a tape measure on the drive just to get a rough idea how far out it was. The supposed 2mm of toe in was actually 15mm toe out. I put it something like right to save his tyres until he could get it done properly.

The trouble with these fancy alignment machines is the cretins using them who just follow whatever the machine says with no real idea what they are doing and no 'common sense' visual or other check afterwards. If they enter the wrong car details into the computer or the thing has a gremlin in it they'll happily send you back out with the wheels pointing at 180 degrees to each other even thought the printout says 2mm of toe. It must be right guvnor cos the computer says so.

Anyway I told him to find an old time mechanic with a nice simple Dunlop gauge who knew what they were doing and get it set to dead parallel. It drove like a dream after that.

-- Dave Baker

It's unlikely to be the rear. Once a tyre is worn down on one edge it can cause a pull to one side. First and simplest thing is to swap the front wheels over and see if it then pulls to the right.

Steve

Had he got non oem alloy wheels with different rims widths or different spacers or offset that has changed the track front and rear? Don't work if the wheel rim to rim distance is not what it says in the computer database for the car (of course that could be wrong). And they are too thick to measure the track and wheel base with a trammel and do a manual set up of the basic data needed.

-- Peter Hill Spamtrap reply domain as per NNTP-Posting-Host in header Can of worms - what every fisherman wants. Can of worms - what every PC owner gets!

Righto then, get under it tommorrow for a real good check over. Then if nothing found back to the garage.

Thanks all.

Sounds very much like they've made a balls up of the tracking, but it may be worth checking everything else.

One thing to note though, is that if you're going to check the bottom ball joints, you've got to jack underneath the bottom wishbone. If you don't, and let the wishbone/suspension hang right down after jacking it up, you won't be able to detect any play in the bottom ball joint.

If the front and rear pairs of tyres are not of the same make and model, this seemingly intractable car veering to one side can happen. Taking a leaf from the archive in another forum:

Took it back to Garage, tried tracking it again from scratch. Checked everything they could think of.

It was still the same.

I swapped the tyres round and guess what?

It now pulls to the right. Will I get away with not changing the tyres or is it advisable to get a new set as I am skint. I know the answer, but am clutching at straws.

Cheers all

John

I do like to be right just once in a while :-)) I posted that because I've just had the same problem with my daughters fiesta.

I would try moving the suspect tyre to the rear, and see if that helps. Or put the spare on.

Steve

The message from Googlebot contains these words:

Are they a matched pair? I had a Metro which was pretty well undrivable with a mixed pair on the front. Put 'em on the back and all was well.

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Googlebot saying something like:

Try turning the pulling tyre round on the rim. Make the inside the outside, iykwim. It might work.