Does your car slightly pull to the right?

[speedracerlo]

I recently got my steering rack replaced for no reason and noticed my car's alignment was off. Even after getting the alignment, I feel like the car is pulling to the right. I know the streets naturally slope to the right so it may feel that way, but even on flat surfaces I feel like my car is slightly pulling right.
I do remember my E46 M3 having similar issues though. Is it just my car?

[M6-Coupe]

Is the issue still there? I just read your post on another threads of yours and you mentioned McKenna fixed it?!
BTW, did they bill you for alignment?

[speedracerlo]

McKenna performed a front wheel alignment for free, but I still feel the slight pull to the right. Can sway bars affect alignment?

[M6-Coupe]

They might if you installed them after alignment...
Have your front tires threads evenly? Look at inside and outside threads and measure them. They both must have the same thread height inside and the same thread height outside. Each tire by itself may have different threads height inside and outside which is normal (due to slightly negative camber).

[dpwracing]

My car seems to track straight, but the steering wheel is turned slightly to the left. Going in for 1200 mile service this week so will see what the dealership says.

[savela]

to eliminate the crown in the street, drive in the left lane of a 4 lane divided highway - should now pull to the left? I have ever so slight pull depending on the side i drive on but don't notice it day to day.

[speedracerlo]

Originally Posted by savela

to eliminate the crown in the street, drive in the left lane of a 4 lane divided highway - should now pull to the left? I have ever so slight pull depending on the side i drive on but don't notice it day to day.

I've done this test and it helps a bit, but doesn't completely even out the steering wheel. I may have to find a flat parking lot to do a test.

[JOHNBMWM5]

Read somewhere to change the front wheels over, left to right , right to left, this worked for them.
Personally no problems, tracks true.

[chask]

Can't tell you the number of things that could affect this but there are several. Unfortunately most of my experience is from years ago and they may be doing things very differently now. And one more caveat - I am an electrical type, not a mechanical one. I was taught this stuff by someone who was pretty good at it and only did it on my own car. My knowledge is very basic and could be totally wrong for today's cars. I am by no means any expert on this. Not to mention, it was 35 years ago and things have changed radically since then. And I do mean radically - - what little I know it could be completely wrong for today's cars - about like comparing balloon flight to modern fight. Also, this is very serious stuff and you should verify everything with an expert - it could be very dangerous to mess with this. I had a pro watching over my shoulder until I was pretty good at it. That said, this is what I learned back around 1980 and it possibly may apply to what you are seeing. It also might not be at all pertinent. I also want to mention that in addition to the two things below there are several other factors that could be affecting this too.

BMW used to require a weight be put in the trunk and an identical weight be put in the driver's seat before performing an alignment. I want to say it was like 200-250 pounds at each spot, but 100 or 150 makes more sense (250 is a lot to heft in and out of a car). It's been 35 years and I just do not remember the exact number, but it was a lot and it definitely was in the BMW service manual - I bought the same one for my car that every BMW dealer used in their shop (cost something like $150-200 back in 1980). As you can well imagine, a lot of people didn't want to do the weight thing. They'd just use the settings - read the numbers in the manual and skip the text part that talked about how to do it. So their toe in setting was off. The weight actually changes the toe just enough to cause a slight pull or make the car kind of 'hunt' for the direction it wants to go. By that I mean it would seem to track one way and then another almost constantly, not a lot but more like a very slight drift. This would force the driver to make some ever so slight adjustments to the wheel to correct it. Not big adjustments, but you would be almost always messing with the wheel to keep the car going straight. The net result was that you had to really focus on the steering wheel input literally all the time. It was very annoying and if you had to do it very long it was very tiring too. Like everything else, there is usually an acceptable range for the toe setting. In addition to the error from not having the weight, sometimes the guy setting the toe would get it near one end of the range and you'd end up with a slight pull to one side when driving the car.

The other thing I have seen that could cause this happens when driving a car onto an alignment rack. In most of the places where I have actually seen the equipment it is usually a very short trip - there is not much room to verify that the steering wheel is actually in the neutral position. There is usually just enough slack in the steering wheel to make getting the wheel in a perfectly straight ahead position more of a guess than one would hope. On some alignment gear I have seen there might be a slight ramp up to the platform where it is done and onto some pads that are not fixed to facilitate the wheels moving while alignment adjustments are made. It does not take much of a turn of the steering wheel to get it just slightly off to one side or the other. If 12:00 was straight ahead, your wheel might be at 12:02 or 11:59. So even though the tires are aligned properly, the steering wheel is off just a bit. Back in those days we did not have all this fancy stuff on the steering wheel. You could pop the cover for the nut that holds the wheel down. slide the steering wheel off the spindle, twist it a bit in the right direction and in some cases correct this error - depending on how far off it was and if the spline on the shaft happened to match the rotation you needed. I've not tried but I could see how these days this could be a bit trickier than it used to be, what with all the electronics on the wheel.

At the place I was in those days they had a racing alignment tool. It was small and portable. There were two pieces. Each had a mirror attached to these long arms that brought the mirrors out in front of the car and there were two little rods that touched each side of the rim. You'd first loosen the locking nut on one side of the steering linkage (the assumption was the alignment was not going to be very far off what it should be), set the rods touching the rims and use the mirrors to read the toe setting off a gauge built into one side. I thought it kind of cheesy the first time I saw it but after trying it a couple of times on my car it really worked exceptionally well. Naturally being an engineering type one time I did the alignment then put the required weight in the car and checked the toe again. It changed more than I would have thought. It's been so long I've forgotten which direction and how much but I think it increased the toe out and brought it outside the specification range. I made note of the difference and adjusted the steering links to set it properly. I then took the weight out of the car and checked the toe. From then on, when doing an alignment on my car I would just use the toe setting I got without the weight after aligning it with the weight. The car drove perfectly.

As primitive as it was, the really neat part of using this alignment tool was that since I was doing it I could set it then drive it to see how it felt. If it did not feel right I could just pull in the shop and change it. After aligning it once or twice I never wanted to use a shop again. I had gotten it down to a far more precise setting than the acceptable factory range and more than most guys doing the job at your average tire shop would do.

I should also note that there are several other factors that could be affecting this too.

[chask]

Originally Posted by JOHNBMWM5

Read somewhere to change the front wheels over, left to right , right to left, this worked for them.
Personally no problems, tracks true.

I have heard this can work too. Just be sure to make certain your tires are not one direction of rotation only. There are some tires you cannot swap to the other side.

[A Frankfurt]

Get the alignment re-checked
The cars that I perform alignment's on drive straight, no pulling to either direction. Something is probably out of adjustment or possibly tire pressure or ?.... Your car should drive straight.