ok well its never really bothered me but i figured i'd ask ok if i let go of steering wheel the car pulls to right same if i let it sit in its natural position. the thing is that the car has been alighned right before i got it (24k miles) and when i lost my first engine (27k) what could cause this? something bent in suspension or out of align steering wheel maybe?

 

Check your tires, if they are worn it can cause the car to pull to one side or the other.

 

Most cars tend to drift to the right....the steering wheel is probably slightly off center....and all alignments are not the same How's that for quick answers

I would take it somewhere good and get it re-aligned. It doesn't take much to knock it out....and often alignments at the dealer are worse than poor. The new computer alignment machines make it difficult to screw up.....find a good place and spend the bucks for a good 4 wheel alignment to spec's that you provide...not to the wishy-washy specs that Mazda says are OK!

 

Check this out:
http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tirete....jsp?techid=47

Make sure you are not experiencing this because this car seems to be ultra sensitive to the road surface conditions.

 

letting go of the steering wheel doesn't tell you if the car is out of alignment.

 

Yep, I experience this daily on a certain road I drive to work.

 

Most cars will pull to the right slightly due to the way most roads are designed. Roads are sloped downward to the outside portion of the road to enhance run-off, when it rains. I find the best way to test your alignment is when cornering at higher speeds. Bring the car into turn and then try to resist the turn using the least amount of steering input as possible, kinda letting the car guide you through the turn. This is where you'll usually get too much feedback or a little instability or wobblyness or understeer or oversteer.

Whenever you get your wheels aligned, ask for the before and after pics.

Ya know what realy grinds my gears, is when you get your alignment and then your steering wheel is off center, and then you gotta go back and waste another 2 or 3 hours out of your day for them to fix it.

 

So when going for a shop for alignment, is centering the steering still required? It sounds like a silly question but does the electric power steering thing still require steering centering done?

 

yes

 

awesome guys thank you all its been alot of help will have an alighnment done this weekend

 

Don't dismiss the simple solutions so fast....

A previous post about pulling one way or the other was traced to the dealer having fixed a flat by changing the whole wheel, except the new wheel had a Dunlop tire, and pulled left when mixed with the other three Bridgestones!


S

 

If the dealer pulled the engine from the bottom by dropping the subframe they should have aligned the car as part of the repair.

 

^ they did with the whole laser thing and it still pulls and all the tires are nitto 555 extreme ZRs

 

The dealer aligned my car and it got worse......took it to a good shop and it was so far out to lunch I could have done better with a ruler and a piece of string Needless to say you get what you pay for.

Also... Try and swap the wheels/tires front to back and see if it gets better......

 

yes it can be a possible suspension component, OR maybe one tire is lower in air then the other, OR, if ur cars been aligned someone didnt do it right, OR they didnt adjust ur car for ROAD CROWN, meanin that NO street u drive on is perfectly flat, there curved somewhat in case of rainstorm, water will deter off the street, so they probably didnt adjust for that, EASIEST thing to do check tire wear, AND air pressure in FRONT AND REAR tires.

 

The first think I would check is Tire Pressure. Make sure they are all at 32PSI cold.