OneWithTheShark

I just moved up to the NOVA area about 3 months ago from Roanoke. I had two brand new tires put on after an inspection and my alignment corrected. Even after that repair I thought the car was still veering off to the right a bit. I didn't think much of it thinking "eh, it's better I guess". Since I've been up here I've hit this freaking pot hole twice and the pull to the right progressively got worse.

I took my car to Curry's to get the brakes done and the alignment corrected. I was charged $400 for brakes and $99 for alignment. Brakes are fine now...alignment...damn thing still pulls to the right, not as bad though! The mechanic informed me however of a bad or wearing shock in the right rear of the car that was "cupping" the tire and that's one reason (forgot to mention this earlier) that I was hearing something during cruise. A friend once described it as a "flat spot" noise. The mechanic assured me that the shocks should still be okay for another 10,000 miles before they need to be replaced. My power steering fluid was also getting a bit dark. I'm waiting on that one too.

I guess bottom line what my question is....is my car pulling to the right because of old shocks and struts?
Should I take it back to Curry's and let them look at the alignment again?

Tiburon '05 94,000 miles on it.

Big Sexy

Sounds like your alignments fucked up.

PicovAndropov

Chances are you have bent a tie rod when joo hit the pothole. Also look at the wheels and see if you have a bent rim as well

OneWithTheShark

I feel like a bent tie rod would have been something pretty obvious to see considering they had the car jacked up in the air for a good 3 hours.

Igofast

Tie rods are really hard to "bend". I feel like it's a really common misconception that people like to throw out. If you've ever looked at a tie rod, it's thick as fuck. It's not a piece of metal you just go around "bending" on a regular basis.
I understand what people will say. "If you hit a pothole really hard, you can bend it". Yeah, whatever.
If I'm not mistaken, a pothole is a hole in the ground? So that's an vertical motion, right? The suspension moves up and down.
Well, tie-rods generally aren't involved in vertical motions. If you hit a curb, or some other horizontal/lateral motion, then yeah, the tie-rod would be subject to stress.

What really happens is the tie-rod bolt wears down and develops play. So the bolt has space to move and bang around in the steering linkage. A big bump can certainly help, but this mostly develops from smaller bumps over time.
You can get under your car and grab your tie-rods and yank on them. See if they move at all.
The tie-rods could be worn out of factory specs, or they could be adjusted wrong.
Your rear suspension has little effect on how your car tracks.
Certainly, if your rear end is totally fucked up, then sure, it will make it so your car doesn't track straight. For that to happen, your frame would have to be all types of messed up. Some semi-worn struts wouldn't do that.

power2weight

So your struts are worn to the point that they are causing tire damage but you can get another 10k out of them? And you've paid for two alignments and the car still pulls? Time for a new mechanic man, I defiantly wouldn't pay him to do it again..

joelala93

Something similar happened to my car a while back, but it was the front subframe that had to be shifted. I had done an alignment about 3 or 4 times and the car still pulled to the right after the alignment. Also my previous mechanic tried to tell me that I had a bad strut up front causing the tire to cup just like you were saying, had him fix it and didn't go away. Decided I would take the car to a place where I could do my own alignment and I adjusted the subframe and performed an alignment and the tire problem went away and so did the pull.

Rutt-Baper

adjusted the subframe? lolwut?

ILLEGAL

Strap that frame to a tree with a long chain and drive till it straightens out son!

dcninja757

I saw someone strap a chain on a pickup truck to a tree to pull it down. I told them it was going to fall on the truck and destroy it. I watched. It fell on the truck and destroyed it. Dude jumped out and ran watching the tree fall onto the truck. It was a city truck too. hahahaha Oh, this was also in west virginia, go figure. His alignment was wrong. lulz.