Tracking/car pulling etc

Paul,

I had a new Ford Escort many years ago that pulled strongly to the left after it had been put through its 500 mile service.I immediatly returned to the garage where the foreman shrugged his shoulders " we haven't done anything that would cause that! must have been like it when you brought it in" Fortunately I had noticed when I first inspected the car that there were lug/washer things on top of the macpherson struts that were aligned front-to-back (sad I know, but I'm like that). However, now the lug on the near side strut was rotated through 45 degrees - the foreman slackened off the strut nut and immediately the strut spring gave out a loud 'boing' as it re-aligned itself.. Steering was once again OK! This was in Cyprus where I guess the mechanics liked to give the cars a really good road test!!

regards

bob furlonger

Have you checked all 4 wheels (esp fronts) for brakes dragging?

Biggles

Just swap the front tyres over LH to RH to see if the tyres have a bias which maybe causing the pull.

New tyres on there. Like I said, it was like before I went for new tyres.

Also, because the tyres had worn on the outside I assumed it was a tracking problem.

So, either :-

1. It is tracking and they havent done it properly.
2. Its something else :-(

Tyre edge wear could well have been tracking, but in spite of reading many times that it can cause a pull to one direction or the other, I don't believe that to be the case.

Tracking only defines to what extent the wheels are parallel to each other; if the tracking is out, both wheels will be out of line; tyre wear will increase, but the car shouldn't pull. It might make it hard to maintain a straight line if it was a *long* way out, but even then it won't be biased to one particular direction.

Whether the tracking is correct or not, the steering wheel can still be off-centre; obviously if this is the case, and you try to hold the wheel straight, the car will head off in that direction! The usual cause of this is a tyre shop only adjusting tracking on one side out of laziness or stupidity. (Both common traits for the profession, I'm afraid.)

In your case, as it feels like a pull to the left, have you tried driving down the wrong side of a cambered road? (With caution, obviously!) If you try that, it might feel as though it's pulling to the right, in which case there may be no fault.

OTOH, if it pulls left when on a right-cambered road, you have an alignment problem that is not going to be tracking; you would need to find someone who can do a full alignment check. That won't be a tyre shop, and won't be cheap.

Chris

Cheers Chris. Yeh, on an opposite cambered road it feels a little less like its pulling to the left but not greatly so.

Looks like I'm going to have to investigate this further.