Had an alignment done on my car last month and it has driven straight as an arrow ever since. Got new tires installed today and now it pulls significantly to the right, what causes this to happen with just new tires? Pressure and wheel torque is even all the way around.
I called the place that installed my tires and they’re saying that this isn’t usually an alignment issue but an issue with the tires. He said to try rotating them to see if that fixes the problem. He says that they’d just adjust the toe to fit the new tires. This bugs me because he’s basically saying I can’t rotate my tires once I get this solved because rotating will cause the car to pull? I’m really confused here.
It’s a 1989 Honda Accord SE-i with 215,000 miles and 195/60-R14 Bridgestone Potenza RE960AS Pole Position tires.
Swap the front tires side to side. If it now pulls to the left, one (or both) of your front tires are defective. The belts are not centered, which causes a problem called “radial pull”…Replace the defective tires…
They’re directional tires though, which would mean I can’t swap them, right?
Moving the tires around is the easiest way to try to figure out if it is a tire issue. First, I’d just swap the two fronts and see if the pull goes left. I once spent about a month & 3 visits to a tire shop to convince them that one of the new tires they installed had a problem. Finally had it replaced at no charge and all was good.
Frankly, I think that the tire shop should do this for you - especially since they said it was normally a tire issue - I find that strange.
For a long time now I’ve had the same place doing my tires and alignments - b/c when weird sh…tuff like that happens I want it to be their problem rather than mine. With different shops you get each pointing at the other and you get stuck in the middle holding the bills.
Indeed you can’t - move the fronts to the back. But I still (see below) think the tire shop should be helping you sort it out.
You can move them side to side temporarily, a few miles in the wrong direction won’t hurt.
Your alignment was done on your old tires? Redo. Dont put expensive new tires on the old alignment. Makes no sense. The tech doing the old tire alignment did what he should. Make the existing situation work well and safely. New Tires new alignment best opinion I can give since I dont know what your old tires looked like. If the tires pull after alignment then you have bum tires.
Well, the deal is I bought the tires from tirerack.com and had a friend of mine who works at this shop install them for me.
Then you need to move them around to verify a tire problem - if that is it - and call tire rack.
There are no directional tires. They do not come from the factory saying right left front or back. all this means is they rotate one direction so you cannot have a whitewall/ black wall swap ie rotate the inside to the out side.
So if I switch the front two around and the pull changes, how do I know which tire is the culprit?
But then i’d need to pay the shop to remount them just to switch sides, right?
Move them front to rear and see what happens…
ok, i’ll try that this thursday when I actually have access to my tools. But my question still remains, depending on how moving the tires changes the way the car drives, how will I know which one is defective?
“There are no directional tires. They do not come from the factory saying right left front or back. all this means is they rotate one direction so you cannot have a whitewall/ black wall swap ie rotate the inside to the out side.”
That is not at all true. There are high performance tires that are directional. The thread pattern is such that they only work correctly going in one direction. I have such on my car now. They are clearly marked with the direction of rotation.
Yep, you’ve got a tire problem. Just a comment on Tire Rack. A lot of folks here recommend them. When I got my last set of tires a few months ago, I took a long hard look at them and what I found is by the time you pay shipping, mounting, balancing, and disposal, I could do just as well with the local tire shop. Plus if you have a problem, they are there to correct it. Nothing against them, but I just didn’t see it as a good choice. I think I’d have them replace all four. Its not your problem to figure out which one or two are defective.
According to their website they will not replace all four, the defective tire has to be found.
What do you guys think of taking the spare tire (the small bicycle size) and replacing each tire one at a time around the car with the spare until it drives straight to determine which is defective? Do you think that would work?
When I got my last set of tires a few months ago, I took a long hard
look at them [Tire Rack] and what I found is by the time you pay
shipping, mounting, balancing, and disposal, I could do just as well
with the local tire shop.
I definitely agree with Bing on this. I found a local independent I’ve been using for years. Every once in a great while I’ll compare the prices I pay to those of Tire Rack. Tire Rack is almost never less expensive, and if it is, it’s only by 1-2 dollars.
Well, after cross rotating both my front and rear tires and seeing no effect in the right pull, I went in for an alignment today. Sure enough, the toe of the front tires was way off. My mechanic realigned it and now it drives straight as an arrow. My mechanic believes that the new tires changed the stance of the car and therefore the alignment readings. This doesn’t make sense to me but all he did was adjust the toe and the car drives perfect again. The only change from the last time the car drove straight were the change in tires. From now on it looks like i’m going to be making a habit of getting alignments right after replacing tires.
Whipping myself for the bum advice. Glad it worked out for you. Guess that’s what this is all about though-learning from each other.