2004 Saturn Vue still pulls to left after alignment

Question

I own a 2004 Saturn Vue with 166,000 miles. It runs like a dream except that it pulls very hard to the left. I took it in for an alignment but that did not solve the issue. Any idea advice what could be causing this?

Answer 1

You have a bad tire. It’s called “tire radial pull”. It’s a defect from the manufacturer. Have the same problem with one of my tires, if it’s up front it always pulls HARD to the left. Confirmed no problem with the alignment and when it’s rotated to the back, the car runs just fine.

Comments

Is there a good way to tell which tire is defective?

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So you know it’s one of the two up front since it’s pulling one way. I would jack your car up in the front, take off both the tires, and try to roll them. If it’s a bad tire, like mine, it won’t be able to do a proper roll.

Answer 2

Well part of doing an alignment is checking the front end out, if they did the alignment and told you the front end is good then it should be true unless they aligned it improperly or only aligned the front end, or you have a tire pulling issue. You can test the tire pull by cross rotating the front tires and seeing if it changes sides, if it does not then take it back to the shop, and have them realign it

Answer 3

My 98 GMC p/u pulled left and I was told the computer thought to the right was center, so it was helping me turn left even though I didn’t want to. I’m no tech but sounds possible in your case?

Answer 4

How old/what condition are your tires in? Anything odd about how the tread looks? And what does the alignment printout say that you should have received after payment? (Alignment sheet is always given after an alignment to, well, prove the alignment has been done) There might be a lot of numbers all over the place on it, but the big ones are front toe and front camber. Front camber should be about -0.5 to -1.0, and front toe should be between 0.10 to -0.10. One last thing, is the car physically pulling to the left, or is it driving straight but the steering wheel is just not centered? This can be messed up because the tech has to eyeball the steering wheel straight and then put in a steering wheel holder, and if done sloppily it can end up not being centered even with the alignment done correctly on the computer.