steering wheel pulls to sides on bumps

MMamdouh · Post by **MMamdouh** » Wed Feb 04, 2009 2:36 pm

hi guys

i have noticed recently that my woo has a tendency to wander to left or right when it hits road bumps... if you are going on a bumpy road or so and just not hold the steering firmly i can feel the steering wheel pulling to right and left based on the road surface... i know bumps should affect the steering wheel but what i have is very significant

i actual saved the car from going right into the center divider after going into a U turn as i had to accelerate hard to match my speed with on going traffic... once the left wheel hit a bumpy patch the car pulled hard to the left and i almost crashed... had to pull to the right fast to save the car

also i noticed that the car tends to go more to the right than left if i am accelerating with steering wheel unattended... and left if i am braking (all 3 engine mounts are new and stiffened by silicon)

car has Nankang's NS 1 tires with 12k kms on them
car has OEM shocks which are probably tired as hell as they have 86k kms on them
tie rods are 20k kms old and last inspection showed that they are ok
car is perfectly aligned... if their are no bumps and i am not holding the wheel the car goes dead straight

i have to mention that i did my last alignment because i was getting too much wheel squeal during braking and the guy at the shop said that the tires had too much toe in... from the measurement sheet i can see that now i got zero toe and since this alignment job the car started to do this... i recall reading that FWD cars tend to have negative toe in to over come the effects of pulling the car so theoretically having zero toe is not right??

is this related to the current alignment setup?
or can this be caused by the worn shocks? (i highly doubt it though)

MMamdouh

GsiTurbo · Post by **GsiTurbo** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 1:03 am

I would relate that to the premature brake lock-up problem. I would inspect the following:

- outer tie rod ends (for play)
- inner tie-rod ends (play)
- ball-joints (play)
- anti-sway bar links
- front anti-sway bar bushings
- upper strut mounts (do you hear "knocks" when going over the bumps?

Tom

MMamdouh · Post by **MMamdouh** » Thu Feb 05, 2009 9:35 am

i hear knocking on the right side when going over bumps indeed... and i think the brake/suspension issues are inter related so i will not jump into anything until i do replace the shocks and inspect every bit of the suspension

so does this mean that the ZERO toe is not a factor here??

... will keep you posted