Has anyone else experienced this?

I have Falken Ze 512's on 15" R-82s that I use as my winter tires on my MCS. I recently "rotated" my tires back to front. (They indicate they are unidirectional so I didn't cross...) I noticed the car began to feel like it was drifting to the right when I released the steering wheel on a straight, level road. I checked the air pressure and they were all equal. I checked the alignment and found the toe was out a bit and had it adjusted. The tire shop said the caster was out of spec: left was just below the specified range and the right slightly more, but the difference between the two was within the specified range (only a .5 difference). Camber was witin specs. I don't recall ever hitting any big potholes or anything to damage the suspension.

Someone at work mentioned that sometimes tire manufacturing differences make one tire have more "grab" than the other. Could this be the case? They suggested I try moving the tire to the rear again and seeing if it stops. If it does, should I be concerned? If it doesn't, any other ideas? Unfortunately, I sold my S-Lites so I don't have another set of wheels to swap out to check -- maybe this is my excuse to do a little shopping...


Thoughts?

 

Sounds like a radial pull - swap your right front wheel with your right rear, and see if it goes away. Please report back.

Alex

 

I swapped the right side front to rear and it seems to have stopped pulling to the right. So what does that mean? Should I be replacing the tire that was pulling? Is that something normally covered under the standard tire warranty? Or do I just leave the tire in the rear and not worry about it?

Now I'm thinking I should swap the left side front to rear so the pairs have equal mileage.

 

Could this be just from the wear pattern on the tire from being in the back with a different camber. (If it is a different camber. I'm just guessing). I rotated my runflats at 15K front to back and it didn't pull.


Paul

 

You have a radial pull, its a manufacturing defect.

The dealer should cover this tire's replacment.

Sounds good!

Alex

 

I've been going through looking at some old threads and thought I'd post a follow up. Turns out it wasn't radial pull afterall. It was a problem with the ABS sensor in one of the wheels. Once they replaced the sensor, the problem went away.

 

but you said the problem went away when you "swapped the right side front to rear and it seems to have stopped pulling to the right."

it's not just the ABS sensor, you have a defective tire.

 

Yeah, that's the strange part. It did go away initially when I swapped back to front, but gradually came back. Then when I switched to my summer wheels, it started again, but didn't go away with the swap. Finally it got to where the brake was engaging and pulling me off the road and I had all of the warning lights going off. I Got the sensor replaced, no more pulling. Put the original set of wheels back on just to check and no pulling. Makes you go hmmm....