Hi. I have an 06 TL 6MT. Recently I had my tires rotated and shortly thereafter I noticed the car pulling right.
Then I got a slow leak in the passenger side front tire and took the car to a local tire shop. They found a nail close to the inner wall and told me they can't fix it and I should get a new tire, which I did. The old tire on the left side is apparently in very good shape and the mechanic felt I would be OK with the wear mis-match.
On the way home with the new tire in place I noticed that acceleration makes the car really pull to the right, even more dramatically than before. Could it be due to the new tire alone, or do you think there is more to it? When just rolling there is no pull, only with torque applied to the wheels.
Any hints are welcome as I prepare myself for a trip to the dealership.

 

replacement tire...needs to be rebalanced preferably on a road force balance machine. the tire itself maybe creating excessive lateral pull. or you are just experiencing the torque steer the car produces.

i personally wouldn't run the mismatched tires on the front, but that's me.

 

I just rotated my tires for her 60 thousand mile birthday on Saturday.






I changed her oil and did the rotation at a 6k mile interval.
the fronts still looked good but the rears looked brand new!
Since I have directional tires, I did front to back.


I knew the meatier tire was gonna be different.
I, too, now have a very teeny minute pull to the right.

I knew I should have got them balanced.

 

What does rebalancing do?
It's definitely torque steer, but is it due to uneven resistance of the the two front tires? Is the new one possibly stickier?
I'm thinking of moving the new tire to the rear, or possibly getting a second new tire and keeping the little worn one as a spare in the garage.

 

dynamic balancing vs a road force balance.

dynamic balance accounts for the roundness of the tire or outward forces.

road force balance accounts for the outward and lateral forces of the tire. it could be a bad tire with excessive lateral forces.

what kind of tires are you running?

the pull could be from the new vs slightly worn tire. you could try and flip the front ones Lt. to Rt./Rt. to Lt. see if the pull goes to the other side, then you know it's that one wheel/tire.

google hunter road force balance. most dealers have them. many of the big box tire shops have them now too but not all of them.

 

I use Continental ExtremeContact DWS tires.
I will research the hunter balancing. Thanks.

 

i had issues with my DWS tires balancing correctly when i first had them installed. dynamic balnacing...didn't quite get it (my dealer outsourced the install b/c they didn't want to risk damaging my rims). i had to pay extra for my dealer to re-do the balancing on my with their hunter road force machine. i had a pull from one of my tires. they rebalanced all the wheels and tires, had to turn the tire 180* on the problem wheel and tire by hand since they didn't want their machine to mess with my rim. the machine then told them where to place each wheel/tire on the car to further "balance out" the lateral pull i was getting. it was better after they did all of this. they damn near broke their backs turning that one tire on the wheel by hand for me (and they spent at least 2 hours doing the entire job for me when really it should take maybe 45 minutes).

 

could be torque steer as stated above

 

Are your fronts and backs different sizes? Not sure why he would put the new tire on the front. New tires are always supposed to be put on the back, regardless if the car is fwd or rwd.

 

Or you live where the roads are dry

 

How hard of a pull? If you let go of the wheel does it quickly pull? If it does could be a shifted belt. Other then that rebalancing the wheel isn't going to stop the car from pulling. Either your alignment is off or like stated maybe that tire is worn down more then the other side causing a slight pull.

 

I have been told...never ever run mismatched tires.

 

 

I checked, the sizes are the same. I'm thinking of going back and asking to have the new tire moved to one of the rear wheels. Thanks.

 

How do you only have 60K?
I just rolled over to 150K :/

 

It's a pretty hard pull that is proportional to the power delivered to the wheels. The harder I accelerate, the more it pulls. I can feel it grabbing the steering wheel and moving it.

"If it does could be a shifted belt."
Which belt would that be?

I don't think the alignment is off because I didn't hit any potholes or other objects and the car behaved right until the tire rotation, and then it got worse with the new tire.
It pulls toward the new tire as if there was more friction or some slippage on that side.

Thanks.

 

weekend WARRIOR!
thats how! lol

during the week she stays in the garage.

 

Torque steer is directly related to how much power is delivered, however, as I said above you should never run mismatched tires. If one tire is worn more than the other it is a different diameter.

 

Putting the new tire to the rear took care of the torque steer. The car feels OK again. Thanks for all your advice.

 

This is your problem

 

i have 51,600 on mine....and it's an 08....and i do minimum 21 miles a day....that's just from home to work to the gym and back home

 

i'm actually having the same problem...im running mismatched tires from front to rear....the fronts are michellin and the rears i forget but yea...