My car has been driving me crazy and when I got 4 new tires and a wheel alignment done I thought everything would be ok. However I noticed that the car veers to the right on a straight road. I have since taken it back to where it was aligned and at first after all their efforts the car still veered to the right. They took the front wheels off and they noticed that my front left lower control arm was bent.

Are these expensive and hard to replace? Will it cure the veering to the right?

Any ideas? Cheers

 

Suspension damage that changes the geometry is most liklely going to cause the car to behave badly. That is all anyone can tell you from where we sit. Alignment done without tying down the suspesnion to the specified ride height is hit or miss anyway. I alwys get it done at the dealer to save doing it over and over.

 

it depends on where your camber is, and why didnt they catch this on alignment? If I have an alignment that not where it should be and way out I really look at the suspension for why. And you say veer, but define, does it drift, or do you need to put on the turn signal if you let go of the wheel? Theres a difference, if it drifts, a beeter alignment to comphensateis needed. If turn signal need you have radial tire pull, swap front wheel side to side to verify a change to the left, you didnt get directional tires did you>......I hate directionals for this exact reason, but you can still swap temporarily to see. It will either go left or it will straighten out....

 

Yeah I will be having this checked out as well and reporting back, as my old 98 car has always pulled to the right. It must be something else as I have changed all tires and had them balanced/alignment done, still pulls to right pretty hard.

 

you need someone that knows how to align a car, not just set to what a machine tells them, cause its only a tool, not the end all. I worked hard to get Jaguar to change the specs on 03 and up stype for insufficient toe in spec. If the tires are wornout inside in the front and I put in on the alignment machine and is shows it fine for toe setting, but the tires tell me otherwise, I believe the tires not the machine. Jaguar finally changes specs, but as far as I know I still see independant shops with the outdated specs. Same issue with 04 and up XJ8's but they still havent changed those specs....funny how I align these with more toe in than the factory spec and the tires quit wearing out the inside tread prematurely....go figure.
For anyone that suspects tire pull rather than alignment, swap the front tires side to side and see if the pull changes...