My 2009 Camry pulls to the left since the very first week. I tried many times to go to the dealership service and they did major repairs but the car still behaves the same way. A Toyota technician came in and did his best to convince me that the car pulls to the left for two reasons:
1. If I drive in a straight road, my weight (about 220 lbs) forces the car to pull to the left.
2. If I drive in a left-crowned road, the car normally pulls to the left.
I drove more than ten cars (including Toyotas) before and I have never experienced that my weight makes any of them pulls to the left. When he was sitting in the passenger seat, the car was much better but it made some drifts to the left.
The Toyota tech said that the new Camry is normally sensitive to driver weight and to road crowns. If I know this fact before buying the sensitive car, I would not buy a Camry.
Any advice? Is that really normal for a new Camry? Is the new Camry designed for slim people only?
Do not accept this male bovine excrement that they are throwing at you!
You need to contact the Toyota Zone Representative, who can direct the dealership to perform the repairs that they are either reluctant or not competent to do at this point. Your Owner’s Manual should have contact information.
Good luck!
Has the dealer done anything else like an alignment or a tire rotation? What were the major repairs? Have the tires been checked for defects? Have you ever obtained any second opinions?
I have a 1993 Caprice that pulled hard to the right due to a tire issue. Two alignments and a front to back tire rotation made no difference. I switched the front tires side to side and that fixed the pull.
Ed B.
The major repair was taking the suspensions off and putting them back at different angles and test the car. This lasted for 7 working days. They informed me that taking one strut off lasts for a day.
They did alignment and tire rotations three times.
All of this is more evidence that you need to do what I recommended in my first post.
Good luck!
The Toyota tech said that the new Camry is normally sensitive to driver weight and to road crowns.
Great, Now go back to that same tech and have him give you a test ride in a new Camry so you can see it do the same thing … Fat Chance!
[b] Don't let them get away with that, "they all do it" garbage. [/b]
My guess is you are going to need a four wheel alignment. I suspect that back is out of alignment.
These people simply would rather feed you balogna thann fix the car. These excuses are at the bottom of the list of poor sloppy excuses.
In addition to the possibility of needing a 4-wheel alignment, you could even have a dragging brake pad from a defective caliper. It may even behoove you to have the car looked at elsewhere for evidence of repaired shipping damage.
Whatever the problem, it is not normal and they should be fixing it.
If they’ve tried to fix it several times already, it’s time to start looking up the Lemon Law in your state. With that information in hand, and possibly a trip to a lawyer for consultation about the lemon law, go to the dealership and have them take you out in a similarly equipped Camry to see if it is the same, hell, take as many as you see fit to see if it’s your car, or if it is all Camrys. If none of the other Camrys does this, take a trip back to the lawyer and talk about envoking the Lemon Law and getting a new vehicle
What you’re being told is BS.
If one assumes the tire pressure and alignment is correct, have these people not considered the possibility of a tire bias pull? That can occur even with brand new tires; factory installed or purchased from the local tire store.
The 2 front tires should be rotated from side to side. If the pull goes away then it’s tire bias.
A point about the alignment. If they told you they checked the alignment, told you this was being done under warranty, and you did not sign a written repair order and receive a copy of it, then you may have even been BSed on that.
An added thought: you may have a dragging parking brake shoe due to a defective part.
I remember reading a similar post last year. The person in question took it to a relative’s garage after the dealer claimed several times that they looked it over and found nothing wrong. Well, it needed a wheel alignment. His relative easily fixed the problem. The dealer obviously never touched it.
If I ran a crooked service department, I’d tweak it out of alignment enough to cure the problem if alignment proved not to be the problem. Don’t trust them!
You’re better off letting an honest mechanic find the problem and then presenting the bill to the dealer’s service rep if you let an outsider fix it. I’d ask the dealer rep why his “licensed technicians” were incapable of fixing such a simple problem and then I’d ask why I should ever consider them for any repairs when the warranty expires. SOB’s!
You can present the bill from an independent mechanic to the dealership, but getting them to pay that bill could be an entirely different matter. Most dealerships would resist paying, and they know that it would not be worth your time and effort to litigate the issue for the amount necessary to properly align the car.
Many years ago, I had my alignments done by an independent alignment shop that had been in busines for years. I told the owner about a bad experience that I had at a Sears service center when I was in graduate school with an alignment. The owner laughed and pulled an appointment book out of his desk and showed it to me. It was full of appointments with dealers who had brought vehicles to him. He told me that while most of them had alignment racks, if there was really a sticky problem and the customer fussed enough, he eventually got the car. I would bet that the same problem exists today. Now my original shop is long gone, but I go to an independent tire dealer for alignments, even though the dealer where I bought the car advertises alignment specials that are often less than my independent shop. I put more trust in a shop that has an alignment specialist and I am never certain who the dealer assigns to the alignment jobs.
Brake draging would be my first guss, alignment second…