Radial Pull: Why does my truck pull so hard to the right??

[TIMSPEED]

After I got my 3" drop spindles installed, they re-aligned my truck, and said that is has a mean pull to the right, and I should get new tires, that they're bad, and they're causing a thing called "Radial Pull". Now, these tires are BRAND NEW, I JUST had them mounted the day before the spindles went on. I drove over there and they were fine, but when I left, it was pulling like a mofo to the right. What do you guys think? Should I just take the truck to another shop and have them align it and see if they can fix it, or what??
P.S.- I have my alignment specs, if anyone knows that sort of stuff...Should be same as factory though right? Since I did a spindle drop, the suspension keeps the same geometry. (Except I put on 1" smaller diameter wheels, I went from a 29" to a 28")

[low 84]

cross rotate the tires and see if it still pulls right, if it does then its not your tires. so the next logical thing would be alignment. does it always pull right? or just when breaking? if you want to post the alignment specs i can take them to work and compare them to the computer and see how close they are to spec.

[low 84]

welll i just remembered your tires are probly directional so you can't cross rotate them without dismounting the tires. i still think thats the best thing to do first to try to isolate the problem, but you'd probly have to pay for someone to dismount and remount the tires going the other direction.

[TIMSPEED]

Ryan,
I swapped the Passenger side front, to the passenger side rear and that didn't change anything. (It's pulling to the right) I'll change out the drivers side's 2moro and see what that does.
It pulls to the right whenever I let go of the steering wheel. I mean, when I'm holding the steering wheel, it's not even noticeable that it's pulling, but when I let go of the steering wheel..it GOES. Could it be my Front Passenger brake caliper is frozen? My rotors/pads are pretty bad, but I don't audibally hear anything rubbing/scraping. The specs are:

Left Front:
-0.2deg Camber
0.1deg Caster
0.20deg Toe
Right Front:
-0.1deg Camber
0.3deg Caster
0.22deg Toe
Total Toe: 0.41deg
Steer Ahead: -0.01deg

The guy at the shop has on the paper, the rear alignment specs...I just looked at him, and laughed. (There's no alignment for rear of 2wd C10's) But here's the specs they show for my rear (kinda funny)
Left Rear:
0.0deg Camber
-0.10deg Toe
Right Rear:
-0.2deg Camber
0.01deg Toe
Total Toe: -0.09deg
Thrust Angle: -0.06deg

[low 84]

what you really need to do to eliminate the radial pull theory is swap the tires side to side, but you would have to have them dismounted and switch directions. and if it was radial pull then it would pull to the left and if its not then it would keep pulling right and probly be alignment related or it very well could be your right caliper dragging. but i'll take the alignment specs to work and see what a can find out.

[pkbinplano]

Does it pull to the right when braking and hands off wheel ?

[TIMSPEED]

It actually seems to be pulling less today..dunno why.
But naw, it pulls to the right braking or not. But it only pulls when I let go of the wheel. If I'm holding the wheel, I can't even notice the pull, but when I let go, it goes to the right.

[Blue Beard]

Tire pressure came up...............kidding

[Capitol68]

take it back and tell them to redo it,,,u said u have new tires, talk to the manager

[MylilBowTie]

Check your ideler arm(s) and see if it needs replaced.

[TIMSPEED]

Originally posted by MylilBowTie
Check your ideler arm(s) and see if it needs replaced.

It probably does..how would I know??

[MylilBowTie]

There is probably an easier way than this but this is how I looked at mine. I jacked one side of the truck up in the front under the lower A arm. Took the tire off and looked at the idler arm. With both hands at 9 and 3 I moved the rotor back and forth like 1/2 then just barley at all to see how much play is in there. Im pretty sure there shouldn't be any at all but I might be wrong. I could just tell mine is totally shot (lots of play) plus it always pulls to the right.

It doesn't do it real hard but I wont let go of the wheel more than a second literally anymore than that its almost over the white line like a drift. Its not all that difficult at all to keep it strait just need a little tension on the wheel. I plan on getting it fixed pretty soon as well as rebuilding the whole front end. I never worked on suspensions yet so I haven't a clue how to replace it yet.

[low 84]

you had a pst kit installed right? if so then it came with a new idler arm.

i looked at your alignment specs with a buddy at work. look at your left and right caster. your left caster is .1 your right is .3. on a perfectly flat surface you would want your caster to be exactly the same on both side for the vehicle to track in a straight line. however, roads aren't perfectly flat, they are crowned in the center and slope down on the sides. its not a huge slope but enough. i'm guessing this is done for drainage reasons. anywho, since roads arent perfectly level you want your caster on the right side set higher than on the left side to compansate for the angle of the road. alot of shops (including us) set the caster on the right side of the vehicle .5 higher than on the left. if you look at your specs your caster is set at only .2 higher on the right. we would have set the right side caster a .6 (or as close to it as possible). so this is enough to make it pull right. it shouldn't jerk hard right when you let go of the wheel but its enough to make it glide right.


this said you could have other problems that are adding to the right pull, like a dragging caliper or something

[TIMSPEED]

Yeah, I had my PST kit installed..hmm..I wonder what would cause the pull? Maybe my brakes are crappy..I'm changing them out next week..we'll see after that. Thanks for looking at that Ryan.