Pull to the right

Hey everyone. Need some advice. Just bought a used 2023 Tacoma TRD OR 4x4 with 32,00 miles. It’s all stock. Noticed that I have to hold the steering wheel slightly to left to drive straight and it pulls to the right. Had alignment done, tires rotated and balanced, and it still pulls to the right. Took it back to alignment shop and they said everything is in spec and it is probably your tires. Attached are the alignment specs. Anyone have any suggestions?

 

See the numbers in red on the top right? That means they aren't within the range they should be in.

Also, does it have a lift?

What do the tires look like?

 

Yeah I see that. No lift, all stock. Tires look fine to me. Also adjusted tire pressure to 32psi, but still does it

 

What does the carfax say, has it ever been in an accident?

 

Carfax is clean. 1 owner, no accidents

 

Your pull is possibly from the caster difference. It is .6 higher on the left. Normally you need 1 degree or more to have an issue with caster, but since it is on the right and roads are crowned to the right, you might see it from that. I would ask, nicely, for them to even out the caster. Making it higher on the right. You want that for 2 reasons. One as I already stated and higher caster improves tracking. It could be a combination of those that you are feeling. It isn't a huge change, but you will possibly see a difference.

I wouldn't worry about the camber. That will not impact your issue.

Normally my first suggestion would be to cross rotate your tires. That might make a difference, but I think by looking at your numbers, you could benefit from an adjustment.

 

My 23 pulled to the left from new, the dealer did two alignments in 6 months and it still favored the left. I removed the factory Goodyear tires at 5K miles and installed Falken wildpeak's, no more pull and the truck now rides and steers straight.

 

Switch your cross caster. The camber is red but it's the same on both sides and not very extreme at -0.3* you may like how it drives if it were positive but thats not causing your pull.

To compensate for road crown so it drives straight, you want 0.5* more caster on the RIGHT side of the vehicle. Camber should be equal side to side and toe should be equal side to side

 

Thank you all for the suggestions. I’m gonna start by cross rotating the tires and see if that makes a difference and go from there.

 

My 23 sport has had a what I call “drift” to right from day 1. Alignment checked , tires good After 2 nd tire rotation at 15 k went away on its own

 

Here are some things to consider.

A very, very slight drift to the right is actually highly desirable from a safety perspective. You want your vehicle to have a slight tendency to drift right to avoid oncoming traffic. I'm talking slight drift. Like your Taco would cross the solid yellow line on your pax side after 1/4 mile uncorrected. Let's do the math.

That's a mere ~5 ft of correction over 1320 ft traveled. And that would take only 15 seconds at 60 MPH. That's 4 steering corrections per minute on a perfectly straight road. You can and should live with that. In fact, that is ideal. You're not practically going to get any better than that. 1-2 psi difference in tire pressure(s) will result in that kind of drift.

If your vehicle is drifting more than that, like it only takes 5 seconds for your vehicle to drift outta lane, then YES there is maybe room for alignment improvement. Otherwise, it might be best to leave good enough alone.

Some consideration may be given to where you live - like in west Texas where everything is pancake flat and the roads are generally good. On the other hand, if you live in New York city, any given pothole on any given day will "adjust" your alignment without you even trying. Fine tuning an alignment there is an exercise in futility.

No matter what, you do not want a slight drift to the left. Most alignment shops will not send a customer out like that. You do not want to have to constantly steer your vehicle away from oncoming traffic. That is no bueno.

Also, virtually every modern road that has been paved or re-paved in the past 10 years has a crown to the right on purpose. Drainage from rain and snow melt is one reason. The other reason is for vehicles to have a tendency to go off road to the right. See above.

HTH!

 

Not sure I agree with this.

1) Right front camber is only 0.1 degrees out of spec. That is within measurement device error. There are 3600 of 0.1 degree increments on a 360 compass circle, so that is insignificant and meaningless error.

2) SAI = steering axis inclination - is more or less an "FYI only measurement" that in basic terms represents the steering tendency to return to center. Unless you are tuning an IndyCar for oval track racing, it is generally not adjustable without expert precision. So that red does not apply.

There was a good point above about adjusting "cross-caster". Your alignment shop better have laser measurement to do so.

Otherwise, that alignment sheet above is about as good as it gets. One wheel 0.1 degree off spec.

Slight drift to the right. Tire wear even.

That's an alignment shop that actually knows what it is doing IMHO

 

My truck pulled to the right. Had multiple alignments within spec. Turned out to be the tires (Nitto). Changed them out to Michelin and problem solved.

 

I had this same pull with my 23. Dealer found slight alignment issue - they fixed that and recentered the steering. It is better but there is a very slight pull to right remaining. I’m living with it for now. I only have 5K miles on it. Tires were rotated

 

Caster is a issue…

 

When you get your truck realigned, and hopefully not by the same shop, have them max out the positive caster on the passenger side first, which should be about +2.7 to +2.8 degrees, then have them set the driver's side at .3 to .5 degrees less than the passenger side. It'll drive better with more caster too. For this shop to just give you the same old "it's within specs" shit is a dereliction of their duty. They should have been able to instantly look at that printout and tell you exactly what the problem was and how to fix it, but even more, the technician should have recognized this a problem while he/she had your truck on the rack while the alignment was being done. It's also time to start understanding why there's a range of the alignment spec and why just being within spec means very little, and why you might want to be at one end of the range than the other depending on how you want your truck to drive.

 

find another alignment shop

 

No offense, but it sounds like your knowledge of alignments is from reading on the world wide web and not actually turning wrenches. You assertion of adjusting cross caster is a bit of a miss. You don't adjust cross caster. You adjust caster and the sum of the difference is cross caster. Caster pull will always go the direction of the lower side. In this case the OPs lower side is the right side. That combined with road crown will point you toward the ditch.

Your assertion that the shop knows what they are doing is a bit of a miss looking at his printout. Again, I think this is from reading and not doing. This print out is not as good as it gets. I'm going to bet that if the OP looks at his control arms and his adjuster sleeves that he won't find a single tool mark. It looks like nothing was adjusted. Just put on a rack, measurements taken, pulled the pins on the plates, steering cycled left and right and final measurements taken. This wasn't even a toe and go. It was a no and go. No adjustments at all.

If he paid for this, what should have happened was that they should have adjusted caster, but of course that requires work, and if he paid, he needs to go back and get a tech that will get off his ass and do his job.

 

Roads have always had cross slopes of ~2% for drainage (which is 99% of the reason why we slope roads), not for forcing you off the road to the right, since left lanes are typically sloped to the left on 2 lane roads. Crown refers to a road with a high point in the middle between the lanes, with the left lane sloping left and the right lane sloping right, which is how nearly all single lane and two lane roads are unless they are 3+ lanes in one direction. It has nothing to do with vehicles running off the road, although shedding water from the road surface as quickly as possible is also a safety consideration, to avoid hydroplaning. Positive drainage is also critical for road durability, as any water left standing on the surface or in the aggregate base layers below compromise the road durability because water is incompressible and roads are repeatedly loaded with vehicles. An exception is around curves, where roads are superelevated or "banked" like a Nascar track in the direction of the curve so that physics can assist vehicles in navigating the corner safely at highway speeds. If they were sloped away from the corner like a normal road crown (i.e. sloped to the right in the right lane going around a left hand curve) there would be more risk of running off the road, especially in slippery/adverse conditions. People always say on here that roads are sloped to the right when people talk about steering drift, which is only true for the right lane in most scenarios. If a vehicle tracks straight or to the right in the left lane (left slope) and drifts harder right in the right lane (right slope) then there is a pull to the right. If the vehicle tracks to the left in the left lane and to the right in the right lane then there is no pull.