I noticed that the car tends to go to the left side if I let go of the steering wheel. It's really annoying when I'm on the speeding lane and the road is angled towards the left side. I will have to keep a significant force on the steering wheel to keep my car straight. The steering wheel will also have to be tilted slightly (maybe 3 to 5 degrees) to the right for the car to stay straight. That's only on the speeding lane. On a straight road I notice it less.

I already brought the car back to the dealer 2 times for alignment and they don't seem to fix the problem. They told me it's not significant but it's annoying the hell out of me.

The second time they told me that the front left tire was 16lbs and all the other tires were 13lbs, so they put this tire on the rear right side. That helped a little bit but didn't fix the problem completely. I think this is a bunch of crap. How can a tire be 3 lbs heavier????

Anybody had a similar problem? Do you know what might be the cause?

Thanks,

Ron

It sounds as if the tracking is way out. Get them to put it on the test rig.. :)
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Its not really that the tire is heavier, its the amount of pressure in the tire. Lbs per Sq inch. I think what you are seeing is a result of 2 things, a sloping road, and a neutral alignment. If a car is aligned with both tires perfectly parallel, there is less resistance to wandering. I think that some shops either slightly align in or out (I dont remember which) to mitigate the problem that you are talking about. So you end up with something easier to drive, but it wears tires slightly quicker.

Its not really that the tire is heavier, its the amount of pressure in the tire. Lbs per Sq inch. I think what you are seeing is a result of 2 things, a sloping road, and a neutral alignment. If a car is aligned with both tires perfectly parallel, there is less resistance to wandering. I think that some shops either slightly align in or out (I dont remember which) to mitigate the problem that you are talking about. So you end up with something easier to drive, but it wears tires slightly quicker.

:stupid:

Assumeing that the lbs psi are similar over here (UK), I would think the tyre pressures need to be nearer 30lbs psi ish ?? unless the cars used in snow or soft sand.. :dunno:

Get the cars toe-in, Camber angle, and tracking checked on a test rig, it's possible that it has hard a hard bump sometime and the suspension is now slightly out of alignment.. :paranoid:
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I noticed that the car tends to go to the left side if I let go of the steering wheel. It's really annoying when I'm on the speeding lane and the road is angled towards the left side. I will have to keep a significant force on the steering wheel to keep my car straight. The steering wheel will also have to be tilted slightly (maybe 3 to 5 degrees) to the right for the car to stay straight. That's only on the speeding lane. On a straight road I notice it less.

I already brought the car back to the dealer 2 times for alignment and they don't seem to fix the problem. They told me it's not significant but it's annoying the hell out of me.

The second time they told me that the front left tire was 16lbs and all the other tires were 13lbs, so they put this tire on the rear right side. That helped a little bit but didn't fix the problem completely. I think this is a bunch of crap. How can a tire be 3 lbs heavier????

Anybody had a similar problem? Do you know what might be the cause?

Thanks,

Ron


First, invest in a good tire pressure gauge. They should be 32psi front, 29 rear (at least on my coupe) I keep mine at 34 all around with the summer tires.

You could have a bad tire, which is known as "radial" pull. The front tires should be swapped side to side, if the drift or pull is now solid right, the tire that is now on the right is bad. Put that one on the rear, and drive it. How does it drive now? Providing the rear tire you just put there is good, it should go straight or as I describe below.

Yes the car will drift left, in the left lane of a multi lane highway. The road is crowned that way. My car does, it also requires some correction when in the left lane.

The car should also drift slightly right on a right crowned road. If it tries to climb into the oncoming lane on a two lane road, or the left or center lane on a multi lane highway, there is a problem.

Accords only have two settings on alignment from the factory, toe (tracking) front and rear. that's it. You'd need to buy aftermarket parts to make any other adjustments (camber) to the car.

Caster on the front can be changed but only slightly by shifting the subframe in the desired direction. It's not something that should be done unless the car has a SEVERE pulling problem that is not correctable by any other means.

>>>Accords only have two settings on alignment from the factory, toe (tracking) front and rear. that's it. You'd need to buy aftermarket parts to make any other adjustments (camber) to the car.<<<

Ooops, sorry Ron, I was unaware of the above facts. :blush:

Thanks for the info Fred.. :)
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I have to pull the wheel in our 7th gen to the right.

I'd say it's normal.

Just CHILL!

James:

I’m trying to figure out what controls the tracking. The tires are not even wide!!

The tire pressure is 32 for the front and 30 for the back, as recommended.

The car continued doing this even after they did an alignment. They showed me the numbers and all of them were within specs.

Mike M:

It’s very interesting what you’re saying. I haven’t heard of this before. But I never had to do this with my other cars. It could be that Honda’s steering is softer than most cars.

Fredsvt:

Thanks for the great info.

The “heavier” tire was on the front left originally. After they put it on the rear right the pulling decreased a little bit but it was still there, which makes me think that the problem is in the suspension and not the tire.

The car drifts right on a right crowned road, and left on a left crowned road, I understand that. But in my case, when I’m on a right crowned road the car takes maybe 5 to 8 seconds to switch lanes to the right by itself. On a left crowned road on the other hand it switches lanes to the left in less than 3 seconds. Big difference!

After the alignment, they showed me all the numbers and they were within 1 degree of spec, including camber.

I want to install aftermarket springs and shocks and I want this problem fixed before I do this. Otherwise the dealership will have an excuse to say that the alignment problem is caused by the new suspension.

Dads-car:

I can’t chill when I buy a new car with problems like that. I bought a Honda, so I expect top quality. If I wanted a car with problems I could have bought an American car for $10K less. At the time I bought my car GM was giving some seriously good deals, but I decided to get the Honda for a piece of mind.