Drifting Issue - Help!

[rjacket]

Originally Posted By: firefighter
I will check the tsb and get the # when I go to work. In your original post you said you had the tires put on 4K ago then you had it aligned cause of a pull. Did you have any of these problems with the old tires? Did you have a drift with the old tires? I would hate to see you spend this money doing all these alignments and it is the tires any way. I see you rotated the tires front to back, it is not all that unlikely that you could have to bad tires on the same side. you should try switching the tires across the front. I know they are directional but for a little test drive it will not hurt them, and then see what happens. If it didn't do it before and it does now what changed. I will still get that tsb info though Hope this helps


So here's the history.

Purchased the car new and felt it was going slightly to the right so had it aligned by Lexus.

Ran the original tires to 27k. By the end of that 27k there was quite a strong pull to the right.

Put the new tires on at 27k and had them aligned because of the pull that had developed.

The shop that aligned the tires confirmed they were out of spec. Car felt much better ie no pulling anymore but drifting instead.

I'll go back to the tire shop and ask them to do a left to right swap for testing purposes.

Thank you for all the help.

 

[rjacket]

Originally Posted By: Char Baby
Originally Posted By: rjacket
Originally Posted By: firefighter
Maybe I missed it, but what kind of car is this?


2007 Lexus GS350 RWD


Before I read/scrolled down this far, I was going to say Toyota/Lexus...No Lie! After driving many Toyota products over the years, I notice this with just about all of them. They glide slowly toward the shoulder of the road. This can be fixed! Just buy a set of G/Y's. And when the car really pulls hard toward the shoulder of the road, switch the two fronts with each other.......FIXED!......................................JK!

Originally Posted By: CapriRacer
Swap the front tires - left and right.

1) If the direction of the pull changes, then you have a tire only ptoblrm.

2) If nothing changes, then you have an alignment only problem.

3) If the pull disappears or is different (except for a complete change of direction) then the problem is bpth tires and alignment.

But this doesn't count if there is a brake drag problem - and that sounds like what you have.


My suggestions too. Swap the two front tires with each other.
Many tires have radial in my experience. I have trouble with G/Y's mostly.


Thanks. Will do the swap as suggested.

 

[firefighter]

ok I got the tsb # it is L-SB-0174-08. I am not going to post the whole article cause it is from our info system and is copyrighted. It talks about pull due to tire conicity and Ply-steer. It also goes through a whole series of alignment checks. I also googled steering pull for your vehicle and came up with some info for this issue. I will be honest with you I did not look back over when you posted your specs for alignment. Your SAI is not adjustable it is an imaginary line drawn through your strut and ball joint and a true verticle line through your tire. It is a measurement of the steering pivot line. This measurement being off can cause a pull. This measurement is used with others to check for bent or misaligned components. I wonder if there is a possibilty that your sub frame is shifted left or right. I am not an alignment tech, I am a drivability tech, so this is stretching my knowledege a little. How ever we have a body shop next to us and the one guy does a ton of alignments and I know I heard him talk about shifting subframes(you just lossen the bolts and pry them around) before to correct things. Maybe a dealer alignment would not be the best, it may be better to find a body shop that does there alignments in house. These guys are generally pretty good, cause
they often have components misaligned after an accident, used to dealing with these problems. I hope some of this helps

 

[rjacket]

Originally Posted By: firefighter
ok I got the tsb # it is L-SB-0174-08. I am not going to post the whole article cause it is from our info system and is copyrighted. It talks about pull due to tire conicity and Ply-steer. It also goes through a whole series of alignment checks. I also googled steering pull for your vehicle and came up with some info for this issue. I will be honest with you I did not look back over when you posted your specs for alignment. Your SAI is not adjustable it is an imaginary line drawn through your strut and ball joint and a true verticle line through your tire. It is a measurement of the steering pivot line. This measurement being off can cause a pull. This measurement is used with others to check for bent or misaligned components. I wonder if there is a possibilty that your sub frame is shifted left or right. I am not an alignment tech, I am a drivability tech, so this is stretching my knowledege a little. How ever we have a body shop next to us and the one guy does a ton of alignments and I know I heard him talk about shifting subframes(you just lossen the bolts and pry them around) before to correct things. Maybe a dealer alignment would not be the best, it may be better to find a body shop that does there alignments in house. These guys are generally pretty good, cause
they often have components misaligned after an accident, used to dealing with these problems. I hope some of this helps


Thanks. Yes this is very helpful. I think my first year alignment was performed under this or a predecessor TSB.

I am going to go to a dealer first and talk to them about this. Firstly, the fact that I had this done in the first year. Secondly, the fact that my SAI is out. I've had the car since new and it hasn't been in an accident. I bought this car on the strength of the reputation of the previous generation model but it is clear that Lexus quality is slipping. This is not the only issue I've had.

 

[firefighter]

best of luck and keep us updated when the repair is complete. Something to remember I did not see in that tsb about adjusting the sub frame. think with me your control arms are mounted the sub frame so if that was shifted left or right you Sai measurements would be greater on on side and less on the other and that is what you had. If shifting the frame is not an approved reapir it will not be in the tsb. It does not mean that it can not be done, it is just that toyota thinks when that part is assambled it can't be wrong. If it is not in the tsb, the tech can do the job 1000 times and the problem will still be there. If that tech had 100 cars before with the same symptoms as you and the tsb fixed everyone, but did not fix yours then he is stumped and out of ideas. You may not be able to get a resolution at lexus, try, but you may have to go to a really good independent and the take the bill to the dealer and see if you can get reimbursed. Just let us know the outcome cause this is pretty interesting

 

[rjacket]

I had the chance to drive the car more today and the pull seems to be more pronounced after the rotation than before.

I also dropped into a dealer and they said that the SAI is not the issue.

So my next step will be to go back to the tire shop to perform the left to right rotation.

If it turns out to be the tires, then the worrying thing is that once they've found the right combination to mount them, I can't rotate them. If I can't rotate them then the 40k warranty on them is void.

So I might just challenge them on swapping them out for tires that Lexus recommends.

 

[charbaby]

Originally Posted By: rjacket
I had the chance to drive the car more today and the pull seems to be more pronounced after the rotation than before.

I also dropped into a dealer and they said that the SAI is not the issue.

So my next step will be to go back to the tire shop to perform the left to right rotation.



If it turns out to be the tires, then the worrying thing is that once they've found the right combination to mount them, I can't rotate them. If I can't rotate them then the 40k warranty on them is void.

So I might just challenge them on swapping them out for tires that Lexus recommends.


Yes, it's time to go after Bridgestone for warranty on the tires and have them replace the tire that is causing the drifting. It's a little hard to determing which tire is causing the drifting but it can be done. I have figured this out for myself in the past. Once you have swapped the two fronts with each other, should the car pull/frift the other way now, now it's time to rotate one side front to rear. If something changes... BINGO! If nothing happens, then it's the other side.

 

[meep]

HAD VERY SIMILAR on 02 accord. drove fine with [censored] uniroyals. bought nice bridgeestones and plus-sized. bought the lifetime alignment. several adjustments were out of spec and they fixed. pulled right, badly. took it back. they had to shift the subframe... which they admitted was not scientific, trial and error each time... guessing how much to shift. got it better but never perfect. always pulled left. funny thing was, with less grippy tires, this never showed up!

Similar symptoms to what you describe happened in a jeep of mine when the front axle was not centered. Axle was about 0.25" to the right. Significant pull to right until that was corrected.

Mike