Troubleshooting lead/pull issue

[hot_sd]

Originally Posted by inafogg

hot sd,did you check the height of all 4 wheels??
maybe take a few measurements control arm to a
font/rear point & checkl it against the other side
Good luck

Yes I sort of did it for the front. The measurements are not going to be precise since I don't have an exact flat surface but I took measurements on the left and right front control arms at a fixed reference point and they are level to fractions of an inch. I did not check the ride height at the rear - I will check that.

I wanted to go back to my original post and the alignment readings I had. Can the thrust angle of -0.11 deg (due to the left - toe) cause the car to pull to the right due to a turning force? If so that could possibly be the problem. I could try adjusting the rear left toe inwards a bit and check the result.

[hot_sd]

An update to this. I got busy with other things and did not investigate this much further since the last post as I was getting ready to service the a/c on the car. However, the compressor shaft seal did not arrive on time so I thought about looking at this again.

I went over everything again and could not find any obvious issues. I also checked online to see if I could find anything and came across an article in Popular Mechanics about troubleshooting these kind of problems. It suggested after swapping the tires at the front if it did not help to try moving them to the rear. Since I had not rotated the tires in quite a while I swapped the front and rear tires (without crossing although I crossed the front left and right as part of the troubleshooting as mentioned earlier). To my surprise this made a difference - now if you come off the gas and shift into neutral the vehicle stays in a straight line and sometime pulls slightly to the right. While driving I feel a need to correct slightly to the right (left before).

So I'm assuming one of the tires has become defective. I guess the solution would be new tires? They are quite worn so probably a new set would be a good idea.