Help! Serious Drift
 

Just bought a new Protege 5. Fully loaded leather, nice car. Problem is I now have just over 1000KM on it and have had it in the shop for alignment 3 times due to pulling to the right. The shop asserts that they have solved the problem yet, if I take my hand off the wheel, it drifts to the right. They are blaming the tires supplied indicating that they are sport tires and therefore, are causing the drfit. This sounds like BS. I have had many front wheel drive cars with upwards of 240HP and experienced no drift.

Has anyone experienced this? The drift is noticeable when you are not under acceleration.



Thnx.

I have but it was due to a minor collision to the curb. Check the orientation of the strut mounts and make sure the white marks on them are pointing in the right direction as other stock Proteges.

I will check that however, the car was bought new and therefore, I would suspect that the struts would be aligned.

I think they will try a new tire and rim set to see of the problem persists. (Could be a belt in the tire etc.)

Re: Help! Serious Drift
 

Doesn't sound like BS to me. This is a perfectly reasonable explanation. Low-profile tires increase response to steering inputs, but they also work the other way- uneven pavement will make the car dart back and forth or pull to one side more. Welcome to the downside of low-profile tires. :)

What kind of tires did these other cars have?

Here's what you do:

1) Try driving the car across a wide open and flat parking lot, and drive along the same path in both directions. Almost all roads are crowned to the outside (right hand side in LHD countries) for drainage, even if they don't look like it. When you're doing the parking lot test, see if it eliminates the pull, or if the car pulls equally hard to the other side when you switch directions.

2) If you still think the car pulls to the right, try swapping the front tires side-to-side (if they're not directional) and see if it makes the car pull to the left. (If the tires ARE directional, rotate them front-to-back and see if the amount of pull changes.) If changing the tire position changes the pull, you need new tires.

3) Post the alignment shop's specs for front camber and caster. Let's check 'em out. :)

4) If all of the above are OK and the pull is bugging you to death, try an asymmetrical alignment. Have the shop purposely align the car with more positive camber or less positive caster on the left side (more negative camber or more positive caster on the right side will work too). This will make the car pull left, eliminating the pull to the right due to road crown. However, if you ever drive on flat parking lots or roads crowned to the left, this will make your car will pull hard to the left. :)

Good luck! :D

well said carguycw :bt:

its probably not BS...the car does seem to pull during hard accelleration but at steady speeds i can let go of the wheel and it drives straight as an arrow (assuming resonably decent road surfaces)...when i got my car it pulled right too but that was allignment and mazda did it for free for me and got it back to me in under an hour