my car recently started to feel loose on the roads. when i drive in a straight line my car often feels like it'll just float left or right at random times, then a couple seconds later it'll go back straight.

i've gotten an alignment done at superautobacs and they said everything was fine. my front i have no camber kit and the tires are about 70% worn and the rear i have the SPC rear camber with toe bolts with brand new tires.

the shop now is saying it might be that the tires were too use to the previous camber and grooves started to form on the tires causing a loss of traction or it can be that my wheels are not balanced..????

anyone have any idea of what's going on? please help thanks.

-Alex

 

What you are probably feeling is what is called trammeling.This really only occurs with high performance summer tires and it is when the tires just want to follow different grooves in the road.The front end can feel darty and not stable...you can read about it on Tire Rack's site.

 

Or it can always be toe. Although camber helps give you more traction through a turn, it won't make your car drift about the road like that...

 

Most highways/roads are not flat but crested so it's difficult to tell if your
car is wandering or not. Try and find a flat road surface without a lot of
traffic, let loose of the steering wheel and see how your car reacts. If it
darts left or right you probably need an alignment. What do your tires look
like, this is one more indication of alignment issues?
Gary

 

thanks for the input guys. it's not trammeling because it does this every once in a while even on flat smooth roads. i was driving last n ight and noticed that my steer wheel is straight and my front wheels would kinda turn another way and it'll adjust back.. kinda hard to describe.

i'm not thinking that i might need new tires in the front.. i think my tire tread might be messed up from the previous alignment issues

 

same thing happens to me...i have no idea what it is either

 

did you ever fix the problem?

 

nope...its happened ever since i lowered the car...i just thought it was the camber or the toe

 

when i lowered my car everything was fine. then 2 years later when i get an alignment.. it seems like everything went out of wack. i got the alignment recently about 30 days ago when i got new rear tires, but my fronts have been used for close to 2 years..

so i'm not sure if it's my previous incorrect settings that my front tires got use to and now when fixed.. it's not responding as how it should be

 

ur tires probably got used to the old incorrect allignment...once you get some new fronts you problem will probably be solved

 

If you are talking about the dead spot in the steering becoming a larger gap, then you need adjustable tie rods, which will also require you to get new tie rod ends. I don't know any easy way to explain, but when you drop your car, your tie rods become a bit too long. It usually isn't as big of an issue on most cars, but it was a big thing on my last car.

 

Hello guys,

Something similar happened to me. I did not change anything with the suspension, but a few years after driving on my summer 20" rims the inside of the tire is all worn out and my car was literally shaking as I was driving down the road. The dealer told me that the suspension was intentionally designed to be on a slight angle when driving straight and when you're in a turn the wheels straighten out. Therefore, with the suspension constantly pushing down on the inside of the tire the tire tread wore out. I am not sure what part of the suspension causes this angle movement. You guys have any idea? I need to know if it's worth modifying my suspension so I can put my 20's back on this summer.

 

I don't know if my answer would help any, but my old G used to do that a while back, it turned out it was an outer tie rod.. it started to wobble slightly loosely.

hope you get your problem/issue sorted out in a timely manner!

cheers.

 

i ended up getting an alignment at West End with Darrin. He fixed my alignment and my car now drives like new again