Steering Wheel Pulls to Right
Tube Audio
The steering wheel pulls to the right on my car.
If I hold the steering wheel centered the car will drive straight.
If I let go of the steering wheel at high or low speeds the steering wheel
turns a bit to the right, and stays there, this is it's natural position.
I've had the car aligned and then the alignment rechecked and the problem
still exists.
I guess its time to check the front suspension? Control arms? Bushings?
Brake caliper?
Any ideas?
The car is a 1990 Lexus ES 250, basically a Toyota Camry
Rodan
The steering wheel pulls to the right.
If I hold the steering wheel centered the car will drive straight.
If I let go of the steering wheel at high or low speeds the steering
wheel turns a bit to the right, and stays there. This is its
natural position.
I've had the car aligned and rechecked and the problem still exists.
What should I check?
___________________________________________________
When you let go of the steering wheel and it turns a bit to the right
and stays there, does the car turn to the right or keep going straight?
If the car goes straight: The steering wheel was not centered
during the alignment procedure. Have it adjusted.
If the car turns right: Swap the front tires and see if it then pulls
to the left. If so, one of the tires is bad.
Good luck.
Rodan.
M.Balarama
"Tube Audio" <tube...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:Vv8%k.2437$jZ1....@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...
Had that problem on a car once-was a tire out of round-had to get a new tire
>
>
Mike Romain
roads with a crown in the middle so water drains to the side. This
driving 'on the side of a hill' has the effect to make most cars want to
pull to the right slightly.
Just a thought for you.
Mike
86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00
'New' frame in the works for '08. Some Canadian Bush Trip and Build
Photos: http://mikeromainjeeptrips.shutterfly.com
JoeSpareBedroom
"Tube Audio" <tube...@sbcglobal.net> wrote in message
news:Vv8%k.2437$jZ1....@flpi144.ffdc.sbc.com...
Did you tell the mechanic to align the car, or did you tell them it pulled
to the right? There's a fine line of difference here...
badgolferman
There is a phenomenon known as "radial pull". Switch your front tires
around and see if the pull shifts to the other side. At least then you
will know your car is fine.
Scott Dorsey
>still exists.
Go to a real alignment shop. Not a tire store with kids who know how to
put the car on the rack, press a button, and do what the computer tells them
to do, but a shop where people actually know how to do alignment by hand.
They will find it.
Odds are your wheel just wasn't centered properly when they did the first
alignment, but you never know until you look underneath.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."
Kenneth
Howdy,
I would suggest that the (wise) test you offer would not
tell the OP that the "car is fine" if the pull shifts.
It would show that the tires were not fine, but there may
well still be other problems.
All the best,
--
Kenneth
If you email... Please remove the "SPAMLESS."
ransley
Try a level parking lot before going further.
rigger
wrote:
>
> - Show quoted text -
Another force is the "Coriolis Force." It is difficult to detect
unless you can ship your vehicle to the other side of the
equator. If this force is the culprit then, on the other
side of the equator it would have a tendency to pull in
the opposite direction; in this instance, "left."
dennis
in nca
Fat Moe
boomerang in the trunk. Easy fix, just leave the gas cap door open.
Hachiroku ハチロク
Same reason the bowl swirls in the opposite direction?
ChrisCoaster
Well since the original poster (Tube-) hasn't checked back, assume
he's gone back to the shop and might check back with us in a few
weeks
or a month.
In the case he's reading, here's a few more details on alignments.
If he lets go the steering wheel and it stettles into a 1-2 o'clock
position and the car tracks reasonably straight, then it is an issue
of toe either with the front wheels, the backs, or both sets.
If one lets go the wheel and it returns to 12 o'clock but the car
goes
to the left or right, then best case scenario is a cone-shaped tire
or
unequal air pressure left-to-right. Swap the fronts or exchange the
cone for another tire.
A worse case is unqual camber or caster - car pulls to the side with
the least of either.
THE worst case is that a suspension component or the body is bent.
I finally drive a car where the position of the steering wheel and
the
direction the car travels matches - almost - exactly. The car pulls
to the right verrrry gradually at first and then starts to pull more
rapidly, as I'm about to run off the shoulder of a crowned road.
This
is NORMAL. I'm driving a Korean car that wasn't ridiculously
overcompensated for road crown like domestics are! :D
-CC
Dan_Thom...@yahoo.com
> Another force is the "Coriolis Force." It is difficult to detect
> unless you can ship your vehicle to the other side of the
> equator. If this force is the culprit then, on the other
> side of the equator it would have a tendency to pull in
> the opposite direction; in this instance, "left."
Coriolis force is negligible on movements of smaller,
concentrated masses like cars. It doesn't even show up much on trains,
and certainly not the water in drains. It affects movements of huge
air masses and ocean currents.
It's caused by the conservation of momentum imparted by the
earth's rotation. If air moves from the North, it's also moving toward
the east as the earth rotates. In the north its speed is low because
at higher latitudes the radius of the earth's rotation is small, and
as it moves south it has little eastward momentum so the earth turns
under it and it appears to be deflected to the right, or west. Moving
from southerly latitudes but still north of the equator, it has much
rotational momentum and moving north it pulls to the right again, but
eastward this time. The net effect has air moving inward toward a low-
pressure area (from both north and south) turning right and ending up
rotating counterclockwise around the low. Moving out from a high-
pressure zone it pulls to the right, again, and circles clockwise
around the high. Everything is opposite in the southern hemisphere and
at the equator it has no effect at all. And it sure has no effect on a
car's steering.
For those who would argue, see: http://www.ems.psu.edu/~fraser/Bad/BadCoriolis.html
And http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/corf.html
Dan
Ray O
<Dan_Thom...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:a97a3705-4418-4622...@e18g2000yqo.googlegroups.com...
I guess that rules out Coriolis force as a possible cause of the pull to the
right...
--
Ray O
(correct punctuation to reply)
JoeSpareBedroom
news:ghni7s$vp9$2...@news.motzarella.org...
Now we have to explore the possibility of a 300 lb person in the passenger
seat and a 120 lb driver. :-)
Mark A
Kenneth
<dishbo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
>Now we have to explore the possibility of a 300 lb person in the passenger
>seat and a 120 lb driver. :-)
>
... but that would depend on the distance between the
vehicle, and the equator.
Ad absurdum per aspera
> It would show that the tires were not fine, but there may
> well still be other problems.
Tread separation can definitely cause this. The cure is tire
replacement. A quick diagnosis, as others have mentioned, is to
rotate the tires to different positions and see if the problem moves
too.
As Scott Dorsey mentions elsewhere, a good alignment shop can make
sure everything is right, and look for damage or abnormal treadwear,
too. It can only take one thing to make a suspension setup wrong,
but it takes everything all at once to make it right!
Cheers,
--Joe
Hachiroku ハチロク
> Try getting a European car, they tend to pull more to the left.
When they run...
Retired VIP
wrote:
>On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:08:55 -0500, Mark A wrote:
>
>> Try getting a European car, they tend to pull more to the left.
>
>When they run...
>
>
It's my understanding that they only work 3 days a week and have to
spend at least 5 weeks a year in a shop on the Mediterranean.
ChrisCoaster
wrote:
> On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 15:47:18 -0500, Hachiroku ???? <Tru...@e86.GTS>
> wrote:
>
> >On Wed, 10 Dec 2008 01:08:55 -0500, Mark A wrote:
>
> >> Try getting a European car, they tend to pull more to the left.
>
> >When they run...
>
> It's my understanding that they only work 3 days a week and have to
> spend at least 5 weeks a year in a shop on the Mediterranean.
Don't knock Europe(or Canada for that matter). I love America but I
consider most European nations to be more "Christian" than the U.S. in
many respects.
Here, when CEO/COO/CFOs make decisions that put huge corporations on
the rocks, guess who gets punished - the Excel spreadsheet developer
getting paid $15/hour, the cost analyist making $30/hour, the on-site
tech support contractors making an honest hourly wage! Meanwhile, the
alphabet soup at the other end of this sentence votes themselves a
payraise at the end of the fiscal calendar. Doesn't seem very
Christian to me!
Just callin 'em the ways I sees 'em.
-CC
man of machines
in a abnormal way and left on the front
did they fail to center the steering wheel even thought the alignment is
correct and to keep it wheelcentered the car drift to the right>??
did it need front end parts that you declined to get resulting in a poor
aligment?
man of machines
better milage on the highway than a 430 lexus according to the detroit news
article
Mark A
news:49406B92...@cac.net...
>i really had to laugh in saddness the other day when i seen a new hummer h3
>got
> better milage on the highway than a 430 lexus according to the detroit
> news
> article
Really? They have not made the Lexus 430 for several years (current is the
460). I am not sure that I would trust the Detroit News as an objective
source of information.
Looking at the Hummer website, the 2009 H3 (3.7 Liter V6 engine) gets 14
mpg city / 18mpg hwy. A 2009 Lexus LS460 (4.6 liter V8 engine) gets 16 mpg
city / 24 mpg hwy.
I wonder what the 0-60 mph time is for H3 beast, which weighs 6000 lbs,
versus 4244 lbs for the Lexus.
badgolferman
Stop trying to confuse us with facts! If he saw it on the Internet it
must be true...
--
"My sources are unreliable, but their information is fascinating." ~
Ashleigh Brilliant
Hachiroku ハチロク
I think there's a reason VW had a Jetta "Trek" model that came with a
bicycle...