D1 steering pulls to left

[Lindsay]

gday all
I have a 98 disco 1 tdi. It has an irritating (but not severe) pull to the left that is worse with a bit of right to left fall on the road. I have recently checked and adjusted the wheel alignment and this made no diferentce. Today I looked at the drag link and thought that that might be the prob as it measured a few mm shorter than specs between balljoint centres. Could this be the problem? As I need to correct the steering to the right (it pulls left), I would have expected to see the draglink measure too long-but then I am easiy confused 8O . I have already tried swapping the front wheels, this also made no dif.

Any ideas apreciated.

cheers
Lindsay

[DEFENDERZOOK]

<span style="color:blue">all vehicles should pull slightly to the left due to the camber of the road....


but if its pulling more than it should, it doesnt always mean wheel alignment.....


it could be rubber bushes worn...
tyre pressures.....
sagged springs....
bent arms.....
etc...

the length of the drag link wont cause it to pull to the left....it is adjustable via the tie rods.....


it may even be the back end causing it all.....
did this come on suddenly or has it been doing it for a while and you just got fed up with it.....?</span>

[camel_landy]

If it's happening while driving rather than under braking, check the bushes. If the bushes are knackered then that can cause the axles to be out of alignment and then pull to the side.

My money would be on the rear trailing arms and the big bushes that mount them to the chassis (the ones held in with 3x bolts). Get under the car and have a look while someone rocks the car back & forth. It's an easy job to change them.

If it's pulling while on the brakes, it's probably one of the seals gone in the front hubs which then drops oil onto the brakes.

HTH

Mark.

[rick130]

as Zook said, RRC's, Disco's and Defenders all tend to pull to the left, depending on how much camber is on the road.
Travel down the wrong side of the road and they will go to the right. :wink:

Talking to one of the design engineers at Super Pro bushes/Fulcrums a few weeks back, they have designed a new bush for the chassis end of the front leading arm to correct this trait. It actually makes the wheelbase a touch longer on the nearside to offset this tendency, and doesn't reduce articulation.

[rick130]

the real fix is to have slightly more caster on the nearside, which could be done by slotting the swivel housings where they bolt onto the axle tubes.