wont steer straight !!

Smeeagain · Post by **Smeeagain** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 12:46 pm

My 2004 X5 3.0 D Sport keeps pulling to the left. Brake pads and discs all round were changed last week but it pulled to the left before that. Three garages have checked the tracking. No one can find an issue with tracking/track
rods/steering/brakes (ie sticky piston or whatever) and tyres are only 3 months old (With no sing of any uneven wear) and tyre pressures as they should be. The car has never been crashed.

Anyone got nay ideas as to why it pulls to the left ?

Smee

gchristofi · Post by **gchristofi** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 1:59 pm

check the nut behind the wheel................ sorry couldn't resist.

I've had similar problem with a 3 series before, and as I suspected, it turned out to be incorrect toe angle settings. It went to the dealers twice before their full alignment service eventually found a large error! If no issue can be found with suspension bushese, I would consider 4 wheel alignment as the next logical step.

Smeeagain · Post by **Smeeagain** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 7:02 pm

thanks yes I have had four wheel alignment checked with both local garage and KDS Dealership system

gchristofi · Post by **gchristofi** » Tue Mar 08, 2011 8:23 pm

Camber angle of the wheels can also apparently have an effect on the amount of tramlining you feel on steering, was this checked as part of alignment?. If you were to drive on the wrong side of the road (not suggesting you do for one minute!) would the car feel like it pulls right instead? Does the amount of pull change whether you're free wheeling or braking? You might try over inflating the fronts briefly to see if that has any effect.

Tough problem to solve this sort of thing. Hope others can pitch in but I'm pretty sure I've seen posts regarding worn bushes causing similar symptoms.

Turks · Post by **Turks** » Wed Mar 09, 2011 3:14 am

What are the make of your tyres that you have put on? Some suffer more than others when it comes to tramlining / pulling...

My Type-R had Bridgestone Potenza (same from factory) and that pulled like crazy!

Turks.

Smeeagain · Post by **Smeeagain** » Wed Mar 09, 2011 2:41 pm

As it happens the tyres are Cooper (Zeon), however the issue seems to be sorted, I went back to the dealership and leaned on them a little to help em out as I had a couple of gripes with some work they did previously.I asked them regardless of what their KDS tracking machine recorded the measurement as, to simply restore everything to factory settings. We then took it for a run and there is only the slightest of pulling generally where there is noticeable camber. and in a cull de sac on a quite industrial estate i tried it on the other side and it pulled to the right

What interests me though is looking back over the data sheet they gave me it states the ride height on the front axle as being Left 715mm and Right 720mm, with the rear axles readings being Left 720mm and Right 725mm - now I could maybe accept a difference between front and rear but the only reason I could think of for their being a difference between left and right would be to compensate fr the additional load of a driver? But then what happens when there is both passenger and driver too so maybe that logic doesn't work?

So my question now is - should there be a difference between left and right ride height and if so why?

Smee

gchristofi · Post by **gchristofi** » Wed Mar 09, 2011 11:14 pm

Glad you got it sorted. Do the readouts actually tell you what else changed i.e. camber or toe?

Not sure about the differences in height side to side, but never heard of it as part of design (you never know though) It may also be that measurements from the alignment machinery for ride height only change in 5mm increments and therefore the real difference could only be very marginal i.e 1mm or less.

Turks · Post by **Turks** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 2:50 am

Could be something to do with weight distribution and when the car is set up the fuel tank is empty or half etc... this would have an effect on the heights depending on the tank location...

I have no real evidence of the above but when my mate was having his car set up for race suspension and corner weights, they requested that he had half a tank of fuel...

Turks.

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Thu Mar 10, 2011 8:38 pm

Think I read on bimmer forum that some E46's were thought to have slightly different drivers side suspension to counter for the single driver thing, but no conclusive answer. Maybe BM do build that in?

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Sundayjumper · Post by **Sundayjumper** » Fri Mar 18, 2011 3:16 pm

E36s tend to sit lower on the passenger side, the widely-repeated internet opinion is to do with compensating for the driver's weight but there's zero hard evidence for this and I don't believe it anyway.

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