I have a '82 Camry with 206K miles on it. Been a good car except that a couple of months ago it started pulling to the right a lot. I have new tires, balanced and had the front end aligned and it still pulls to the right. I normally do all my own mechanic work, but haven't done any on this car, yet. A friend of mine said my problem might be a bent tie rod. Does this sound plausable? Any ideas/help would be appreciated. Richard
How many new tires do you have? What are the tire pressures on each of the tires? Did you have a front end alignment or a 4 wheel alignment that includes thrust angle measurement and adjustment? If you had just the front end alignment, go back for a 4 wheel alignment. A bent tie rod should have been caught during the alignment. How are the brakes working? Does the car pull to the right when braking? Have you checked the wheel bearings?
Inner CV joint is binding under acceleration load. But you'll find some rotational slop in the inner CV.
Could also be the strut insulator bearing is jamming the strut when you turn. Does the steering want to stay in a offset position, or is there an occasional creak or snapping sound from a strut?
sjd
You said in your Subject Line that it pulls under acceleration. You do not mention acceleration at all in your post.
If it pulls UNDER ACCELERATION, then this is called Torque Steer, and comes from the transmission. It could be a motor mount, but probably not. In any case, none of the things you've done so far comes close to what is needed to solve torque steer.
"Torque steer" does not come from the transmission or from bad motor or transmission mounts. A bad motor or transmission mount will have different symptoms, but torque steer and pulling to one side is not one of them, and torque steer will not appear in a vehicle that was not experiencing it previously. Torque steer is the result of differing amounts of torque delivered to the left and right wheels. The differential on most front wheel drive vehicles is not in the center of the vehicle so the driveshafts on the left and right side are not equal length. The Camry has a an intermediate driveshaft on the right side to reduce the effects of torque steer.
yeah ok...that's why when I switched to solid motor mounts on my turbo pt cruiser, the torque steer was reduced by at-least 50%
Well, if you've got the whole damn transaxle trying to rotate in either plane (likely on a pt), it might feel something like torque-steer but that's not the topic of this conversation. Think about it.
My post was not very clear. I should have said that bad motor or transmission mounts in a 1982 Camry will not cause torque steer and that torque steer is not a condition that I have ever heard of in a 1982 Camry. My point was that the OP was probably not experiencing torque steer, and the cause of the pull was something other than torque steer.
Not necessarily. Torque steer is due to uneven length halfshafts, the longer "winds-up" more than the shorter one and applies uneven wheel speeds, nothing to do with motor/box mounts. And wont just come out of the blue, its found on high torque FWD cars. And its not the only cause of pulling on acceleration. You could be looking at any number of suspension bushes being worn and allowing excessive play. Incidentally worn box/engine mounts are highly unlikely to cause a torque-steer-like effect.
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