Pulling to the left or right depending on acceleration

[far raf]

Hi all,

Long time lurker and a refugee from the QuestDriver forum which seems to have gone under as of lately.

My trusted mechanic replaced the front lower control arms at 120k miles and he is getting old, so I felt some sideways pull right away and brought the van back. His son is a very good mech and he found right away that his dad did not tighten all bolts enough. So he torqued everything to the spec and ran alignment again, bringing it back to the spec. Ever since then I am accelerating, the van pulls to the left. When I let it coast, it pulls to the right. I do not feel much of that at HW speed, only when doing about 35 m/h give or take 10. What could it be and what should I ask the mechanic to look into?

I used Beck Arnley LCAs if it matters. The reviews on Amazon said no alignment was needed, but I did need a lot of camber after installing them. Not sure if those testimonials were fake, or I got the fake parts, but it is what it is.

Thanks all!

[Marcellus]

When you replace the LCA, from my experience, you definitely need an alignment afterwards. People think that since the parts are identical, it should leave the vehicle aligned just like before, but this never happens in practice as the parts may not be truly identical and/or the part was installed slightly off.

I heard that a front-wheel drive vehicle toes out the front wheels under the pressures of acceleration. I don't know if this is true but someone that knew a lot about cars told me long ago, so he would toe-in a front wheel drive vehicle slightly to get it to go straight when accelerating. I cannot guarantee this train of thought is true, but it would explain your problem, and it would also explain that one of your wheels is out of alignment and it would pull in different directions when accelerating as opposed to coasting.

Alignments done by many mechanics are not worth a crap. I have seen even computerized alignments leave wheels with a massive visible toe-in. I have been doing my own alignments for over 20 years now after getting tired of killing tires prematurely because the yahoo mechanics did not know what the hell they were doing. The biggest culprit of a bad alignment is the toe-in of the front tires. You can fortunately fix this yourself.

Be warned the method I use is super-high-tech. Here is goes, ....go to Walmart and get a roll of cotton string, cut about two lengths of strings about the overall length of the van. Back up the van and drive it forward 20 feet and finish off leaving the steering wheel perfectly centered while the van is moving and stop the van when centered and put in park. Get out and tie one string around the rearmost holes of the rear tire, make sure that you pick two holes directly behind the center of the axle, do this for both rear tires. Then, go to the front of the van and pull the strings tight and see if it touches the front or rear of the front tire first (keep the string along the axles of the front and rear axles, or keep the string at the center of the two wheels). I wrap the string around my thumb, place my hand on the front wheel and pull the string tight and move the thumb right/left until I see where in the front tire it touches first. The goal here is to have the string touch the front and rear edge of the front tire at the same time, thus the front tire would be aligned to the front edge of the rear tire. You need to do this on both sides at the same time to see which wheel is off alignment. If the stretched string touches the rear of the front tire first, the wheel is toed-in too far and vice-versa. You then have to loosen the toe-in adjustment nut on the outer tie rod of the steering, then shorten/lengthen the tie rod to bring the wheel into alignment. Be careful that the steering wheel sometimes moves on you while you do this, so you have to reset the position of the steering wheel by backing up the van and drive it forward 20 feet and center the steering wheel and measure with the string and adjust the tie rod length again until your front wheels are dead-straight. Sometimes the steering settles after a few days and you might need to revisit this project to make some more fine adjustments. Even if you are not prepared to make the adjustment now, you can get the pieces of strings and check for yourself the quality of alignment your mechanic has blessed you with. This method is extremely accurate, even to hundredths of a degree of deflection. Good luck.

[far raf]

This is so simple that I am definitely going to try your method.

[Marcellus]

Did you end up finding any issues in the alignment?

[far raf]

Not yet, it is hectic here due to both the Quest having a throttle pedal problem and my Honda's alternator dying, both at the same time, and I did not have a chance to look into the alignment, it's on the back burner until the good warm spring days.