I just had both front axles replaced on my 1991 Maxima (both CV boots were torn). Now I notice an odd torque steer problem. Under moderate to heavy acceleration, the car seems to switch torque from one side to the other. This is odd since it does not favor pulling to one side or the other. It actually switches back and forth as you are going down the road.
This is most noticeable when you grip the steering wheel lightly under hard acceleration. The steering wheel actually slips through your fingers a bit (back and forth) as you go down the road. Of course the car weaves back and forth a bit as well. This does depend a bit on the road conditions, but you can tell something is odd. It is not the road causing this ... it's the car. I can of course live with it ...but it is annoying.
The car has 156K miles, still humming along pretty well. I took it back to the place that did the axles. The mechanic took the car for a ride and confirmed that he also felt the torque steer. He took the car for a few hours and looked it over. He concluded that he did not know the cause ... but it was not the axles (he checked to see if they were bent or vibrating). He made sure the brakes were not binding and the wheel bearings were ok. He checked the tire pressure, that was fine as well. He also said the alignment was fine (the car does track fine when not accelerating, also the tires wear pretty evenly). This car got a new rack and pinion and outer tie rods about a year ago so the front end is really tight.
I realize this is an old car and that plenty of other parts are old and tired. I really don't have any reason to doubt the mechanic, i.e., it may not be the axles. His price was reasonable, $360 parts and labor for both axles. I guess the car may have had this problem before the axles were done, perhaps it is just more noticeable now since everything is tight up front. The car has a set of four snow tires on it currently. I will switch back to my regular tires in a month or two, perhaps the problem will go away when I switch the tires. Any thoughts would be appreciated.
Thanks, Moses