I am noticing that my wife's RDX slightly pulls to the right. I first thought this is due to curved road, but this seems to be happening on all most all types of roads. the car only has 9K miles, seems to be too soon for alignment. could there be a problem with something else?

 

yea, I had that on my '07 RDX. It's usually tires & how they wear. Have you rotated them? VERY important on AWD systems. After rotating mine, no more pull!

 

Yep, usually tires. I had the same problem with 10K on mine, they rotated and balanced then the pull was gone.

 

yeah, rotated them, did not seem to make a difference. I am going to drop it to dealership have them check it out.

 

you know the stock rdx tires are unidirectional, i hope you didnt cross rotate, just front to back and back to front, also check tire pressures, and lastly check tire wear to see if it is decently uneven, if the latter is true take it to the dealer.

 

I don't think you are correct, RDX tires are not unidirectional:
1. unidirectional tires usually have arrows on side walls that point towards rotating direction. I studied my tires, no arrows found.
2. Thread pattern on directional tires is usually pointing one way, but if you look on RDX tires, everything is symetrical, another words it does not matter which way tires spin.

 

I agree, I'm pretty sure that the tires on the RDX are NOT unidirectional.

 

Another point - I'm rotating the wheels every 7500 miles, and doing it myself.

When I take off the wheels, I do it also to clean all the brake dust off the inside of the wheel, much better, and more throughly than washing between the spokes with the wheels still on the vehicle.

And then I put a coat of wax on the inside and outside of the wheels.

Seems to be making it easier to clean the wheels while I'm doing the usual Saturday morning car wash, by hand.

 

yep, it was the alignment. they said it was off by a very small amount that they could not see during driving, but to me it made a difference. I guess I am too picky about car going straight on a straight road. So now its much better, not perfect (I guess because its SUV), but meets my expectations.

 

It isnt just being "picky"...you are either satisfied or you aren't.

I find most dealers dont take the time to accurately do an alignment right. They dont listen to the customer and just throw it on the machine get it somewhere in "spec" and say here ya go. I have to always get an alignment done twice at dealers.

 

well, they said it was only slightly off and when they drove it they did not notice any pulling.... I mean, it was not severely pulling, they would have to go on a good straight road and pay attention, otherwise it might not be obvious. I do feel that it got better, but I am not sure if it can get any better than that. This is my first SUV, and I don't know how they usually drive. Certainly sedans seems to be going much more straight on a road.

 

I hear from an old time service mechanic that they align the tires slightly towards the right on purpose. This is to reduce the risk of car running into oncoming traffic if ever the driver snoozed at the wheel, oncoming traffic is considered far more dangerous than whatever you might hit on the right side of the road. I dont know if they do that in modern cars.

 

you are correct, i was thinking of my bridgestone blizzak winter tires. my bad

 

is this kind of thing covered by warranty or do they consider it natural wear/tear?

 

Alignment is usually not covered by warranty and they were gonna charge me for it ($70), but for whatever reason at the end it turned out to be no charge

I think its because I only had 9K miles, I think 15K miles is a cut off for a free alignment.

 

believe 15k is cut off for breaks and rotors to be warranty as well