A few weeks ago I took the 2002 3.8L 4th gen in to do an alignment. I am a student at the Automotive program at SSC so I did everything personally along with the help of my teacher. The car pulled to the right so I took it in to fix that..........or so I though.

I took the car in and all the specs were off in the front and the rear was decent. The rear didn't have any specifications for adjustment, and I hadn't searched around on what to do to get around that on forums so I just left it alone. I went over to the front and set the Camber, then Caster, and finally Toe.

I got the Camber and Toe perfect, and then only the right side caster was off. So I tried adjusting it, for about 3 hours , nothing. The Right side was reading 5.7 which was inside the specifications and the left was reading 6.1 which was out of spec. No matter which way I adjusted the caster it would either go high in to the 8s or just stay at 6.1. I couldn't get it to read any lower than that.

The car is still pulling to the right, pretty bad. It's only hit a few medians and been in a very minor bumper to bumper contact (literally just an inch of paint scraped off in the front. It's riding on stock suspension, with absolutely no mods. The tires are also brand new and have been rotated already so it's definitely not dog tracking/irregular wear.

Do you guys think it needs new shocks in order to be fixed, or is it something else? From what I know (car is my brothers not mine personally) these shocks/springs have been in there all 100k miles the car has.

Any suggestions/help would be appreciated. I really want to get this pull off the car. And if it needs new shocks, probably going to just get it dropped and do everything new/right.

 

.4 degrees of caster should not cause the car to pull. Atleast not enough to notice. Try swaping the tires. Did you do a brake pull test? Also a draging bearing can cause a pull.

There is no adjustment in the back but if the back is saging that will push the axle off to one side. Restoring riding height might be needed or a adjustable Pan hard bar.

 

Yea my teacher said the same thing, but it's still pulling like crazy. We already rotated the tires from the rear to the front, their directional so no criss cross pattern, and it didn't do anything. The tires are fresh and have maybe only 1k miles on them, as they were purchased recently.

By a brake pull test do you mean braking and seeing if the car pulls when you brake? Because if that's what you mean, then no that's not the problem. The car pulls while driving it and then letting go of the steering wheel, not while braking. I will check the ride height today, but iirc it was fine when I did it during the pre alignment check. Our thrust angle in the back was pretty far off, so that may be causing some problems.

 

A brake pull test is when you brake with your hands off the wheel. In this situation lightly pump the brakes so you can barley feel the brakes. Just a touch and let off. If the pulling get a lot worse you have a brake caliper not releasing 100%. If the pulling goes away or gets lessened it could be a wheel bearing or a tire. If the pulling stays the same it is a supension/alignment issue.

Also double check all your bushings in the rear. Most of the time in the front if anything is loose your geometry will not repeat after you joust the suspension but the rear will stay put until you hit the highway. Grab a crow bar and check all the bushings for play.

It is good your running into this at school. This is the type of stuff you will learn in that first 2 years for being a mechainic. 98% of the time when a car pulling is a easy fix. Every once in a while you get one that messes with you.

 

As Gorn mentioned, worn parts will cause a car to drift even if the alignemet seems to be correct, because the suspension parts will move around when stressed. You may also want to check the thrust angle which shows the relationship of the back wheels to the front wheels. This is not adjustable in your car, but can be off if any suspension parts, or the body of the car got bent or otherwise tweaked. A rear axle which is not parallel to the imaginary line of the front axle will cause the car to drift to one side or the other. An expert aligner can mal adjust the front end to mask the problem, but the tires will take a beating, and the car will handle poorly. With age bushings dry out and things can get loose. If you are really interested in getting the caster exact, you may try losening up the mounting bolts on the front subframe and shift it around slightly. The holes are slightly larger than the bolts and you may be able to get enough movement to bring the caster in. However, you will now have to redo the alignment as the other angles will have been changed by moving the subframe.

 

Thanks for all the help guys. I'm going to get the car back on the alignment rack in two weeks, have spring break next week so I can't do it then, and check all the bushings/struts/shocks/etc. I'll keep this post updated on what I find.