I recently put four new tires on my 2000 528 BMW. They are original equipment (Contential). Since that time the car no longer drives as I remember. BMW has now replaced all four tires and I have had the car re-aligned and then checked a second time. My problem is the car no longer seems to center. When I turn a corner, the car will not return to neutral. Or in other words straight ahead. Does anyone have any suggestions on why this has happened?
While the replacements you put on were by the same manufacturer, they apparently had different handling characteristics than the original models and are not tracking as well.
Try checking Tirerack and 1010Tire websites for consumer feedback. Perhaps there’ll be an answer there. Or perhaps on a BMW specific forum.
perhaps when they did the alignment the tech forgot to check the centering … I had tire alignment and they test drove the car afterward to check and discovered they needed to recenter the wheel.
The wheel not returning to center is a sign of a faulty alignment (probable) or a problem in the steering gear pinion (not likely if the problem did not exist before).
Did they be chance give you an alignment sheet with the print-out of the specs? If so, what are they?
When exactly did this steering problem start; only after the tire replacement, after the 1st or 2nd alignment, etc.?
Thanks for all the suggestions. As far as when it frist started, I am not sure. When I got the car back from the first tire replacement, it felt unstable. I returned it and they re-ballanced all the tires. It was better but not right. I took it to a different tire dealer and they also re-ballanced the tires and alligned the car. It was still not right. BMW then replaced all the tires. It was still not as I remimbered. I then had the second tire shop check their work on the allighment and they gave me a read out of the setting. I have both the first time and second time on the readout from the allignments. I am not capleable of understanding what them mean. I can post them if anyone can read and understand what the numbers mean.
Thanks,
Calif-Guy
Before airbags you could solve this easily by removing the steering wheel and placing it back on center. There is too much danger of shorting the airbag circuit to do that today. Get the shop to re-do the alignment–they will probably just remove the steering wheel, but at least you don’t assume that risk.