FTO AUSTRALIA

Hey guys, I have done a few posts recently on some of the after effects of a rather serious encounter i had with some monster curbs, that bashed the hell out of my suspension at all four corners, (hard enough to buckle the rims),.. okies , enough of a background..

the car is a 1997 FTO GPX Manual

After this i got my wheels replaced, and alignment done.
The steering was somewhat light to the left, and stiff to the right.
and the wheel alignment continued going out of whack every few weeks.

Between then and now, i have replaced every little steering part (that the mechanic could think would cause a problem), plus all the suspension components (shocks, springs, top mounts, sway bars, bushes, etc etc)

Much of the original problem is now solved, except for the issue of my car pulling insanely to the left when acceleration is applied (ie.. higher torque, more pull to the left).

Say, for example, my car is going in a perfect straight line, with my steering wheel pointed straight ahead.. so everything is fine in that regards.
But when I accelerate (holding the wheel still perfect straight), the car will just dart diagonally to the left. not a subtle pull by the way, for every 15 metres i continue ahead at 100kmph, my car will have moved 1 metre or more to the left diagnonally.
It gave me the idea that maybe my left wheel is recieving more torque than the right *shrugs,.. im a newbie*

My question is this,... Is there possibly some damage to some drives components.. and if so, what components would I most likely be looking at here that could cause such a massive pull to the left?

Thanx in advance. I am reluctant to pay a mechanic for hours of searching for a ghost problem.

Have you taken it to a specialist to get checked out. Pedders is one place you could try. They do a safety check for a reasonable price (<$20 from memory). Just dont get them to fix it. Many members have found that they tend to overcharge and over service.

Sounds like your steering rack is moving in its mounts.

Thanx for the replies.
Two/Three weeks ago now I took the car to pedders to have the full 28 point check done.
They pointed out that the steering rack was shot, the steering pump was going the way of the dodo, and all the steering rubber tubes were leaking.

I had all these things fixed straight up brand new (or so i was told), and not by pedders. By a power steering place. Fixing these up did not seem to fix the problem up.

The steering rack moving on its mounts,.. how does this work, and where/what would i be looking for?

thanx

A few VE commodores have been coming to work with the same problem, they would be pulling to the left or right, the problem was that the castor on the front wheels and that an adjustment plate would have to be fitted to fix this problem, the FTO has a different suspension setup than a VE commodore so a adjustment plate won't work, the bushes on the control arm on the FTO control the castor, did you get those replaced, if you did then the next thing that I can think of is that the encounter with the curbs was hard enough to twist your chassis a bit but unlikely.

also check for the little things like different tyre wear and pressures on the front, if you swap the front tyres with eachother and take it for a drive if it pulls in the other direction than the problem would be more tyre related.