Hit Large Chuckhole

Today I was driving to work in my 2004 Cavalier and hit a huge chuckhole...so hard I thought I'd broken a rim. Anyway I didn't break it but since then the car has been pulling fairly hard to the left. I checked the tire pressure and it was ok on both fronts. The wheels appear to be pointing in the same direction. Any thoughts?

definitely needs an alignment, it may look like the wheels are strait but one is definitely out of whack

Like JStumpalump said, you won't see anything unless it's waaay off. Even 1 degree of camber difference side to side will make it pull quite a bit. I went way too fast around an offramp last week, and after I drove out of the ditch/median (:rolleyes:) it was pulling pretty bad, and I was only off by .8 degrees of camber. And I didn't really hit anything that hard, no curb, gentle slope down to a grassy field. Be sure you tell the shop that does the alignment what happened and have them check for any broken or bent parts, they should check before an alignment anyway, but some places don't. And if you ask, they should look extra hard. From what I have seen, the chain shops will only do one side so they can do it faster. All you have to do to make it drive straight is get both sides off by the same amount. Don't expect perfection from anyone, there is probably some damage that nobody will be able to see and that will make it incredibly hard to get perfect. When I aligned my car, it took me a couple hours to get all the numbers dead-on (4 wheel alignment). Even after getting the numbers exactly equal left-to-right, it still pulls ever so slightly. If your regular shop doesn't have an alignment rack (most small shops don't), ask them for a recommendation of where to go.

Well I made an appointment to have it aligned, but on the way to the alignment shop the car started running straight again...It didn't pull to the left anymore, in fact it handled pretty well! So I went down and canceled the appointment and on the way back I had to stop to let some traffic through as I was turning left and when I started again it started pulling to the left again. It appears to be pulling to the left only after hitting the brakes! After I let it set awhile it does fine again. Do you think I have a front brake staying on and how do I correct that! I had that happen once on a fiero but it was noticeable by the smoking from the front wheel. This one doesn't do that but it did seem rather warm.

it sounds like you broke something, maybe a tie rod end or the bolt that holds it on borke, i had the same problem with the bolt breaking and when i would turn the wheel one way it would pop out of place and vibrate and pull until i turned the other way or stopped, that would pop it back into place. if im not mistaken that part was only like 8 bux per side and came with new bushings as well. if that is the problem you are going to want to do both because if one broke chances are the other will break sometime and a good rule of thumb when doing anything that has to do with the wheels or suspension is when you do one side do the other as well.

A broken tie rod or "bolt" won't just fix itself, if it breaks, you have no control over what direction the wheel it goes to turns. The left wheel could be turned all the way left and the right wheel could be turned all the way right. When one breaks, the car either swerves or stops very fast, the difference is your MPH and reaction time. Tie rod ends also will not make the car pull either way, if they become loose they can make the steering wheel not be straight.

It sounds to me like you (or the previous owner) have had the struts replaced? The replacement struts come with slotted holes to adjust the camber. You probably knocked the bolt loose in the slotted hole and the other one is still tight which tries to hold it in place, but enough force will still let it pivot.

No, nobody has replaced the struts, in fact they probably need replacing. It has the popping noise, I assume from the strut mounts, that many of them make. It seemed to me that the pulling occurred after I used the brakes medium hard. I'm going to take it for a test drive again and see if it's still pulling to the left and if it isn't, I'm going to use the brakes kinda hard and see if it starts pulling then. If it does it after braking I'm going to assume the brake hasn't fully retracted. I would assume the brake hose has collapsed internally and if that's not it I will try cleaning out the brake lines, I guess. Or maybe it's that expensive thing on the master cylinder operating the antilock brakes.
Oh, by the way, I have bought struts for my previous Cavalier that had NO slots for adjustment, just holes. If you wanted to adjust the camber you would have to slot them yourself.

They also make camber adjusting bolts that may have loosened on yours. Take a look at the bolts at the steering knuckle and see if the top and bottom are different. The camber adjusting bolts will have hex heads, while the factory bolts will have two-flat heads. The camber adjusting bolts are undersized (12mm) with an eccentric lobe that lets you adjust the camber about 3 degrees, if it goes out by 3 degrees, it will pull a lot. If one caliper was dragging enough to make it pull that hard, I think you'd notice that the car wasn't rolling very good before you noticed it pulling.

J-Ri, you are probably right. I tested the car again and it seemed this time that the car pulled to the left intermittently sometimes if you used the brakes and sometimes if you turned the steering wheel a lot, like parking the car. I was going to look at the front end today but it rained all day and I didn't want to shuffle the cars in and out of the garage to work on it. First nice day I get I'll probably take a look. But it seems now like I have something loose in there. I wish I'd went ahead and had the car aligned now; they would probably have tightened all the bolts.