Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting The New Tire Saga...A long tale of woe..

Ok....Here it is in all its glory.... I went to Sams Club and got some new Goodyear GPS tires....they are really nice....Compared to the FIREROCKS that came on the car...WOW...they ride better and with the stick shift and the firestones I could BARELY even get moving in the winter....we just had 5 inches of snow last week and the Goodyears are AWESOME.....great traction...BUT there is a downside...
I got the tires balanced and aligned at a Ford dealer....I got th car back and it pulled to the right....pretty bad....like the steering wheel is crooked when you are driving to make it go straight....so I tool it back in and told them.....they re-alinged it and it still did it.....so they balanced them again to....still doing it....then....they swapped the front right tire with the front left one and now it pulls to the left....so they said its the tire....and I am lost....they told me to try and get a new tire from Sams to replace the one that they say is not good......so...I don't know what to do....has anyone heard of ANYTHING that could be happening here....the tires were brand new...and there is no visual blemishes.... I figure if I get one new tire I can put it on the side that is pulling and if that one doesn't work I can swap it to the other side...I can't imagine both front tired being bad... HELP! THANKS

Sounds like tire pull. One of the front tires is defective, probably the one one the side that it pulls toward. Swaping the tires side to dide is the definitive test for this. If it is a bad tire, the pull will follow the tire. Take the car back to the tire dealer and tell them what you have gone through. There should be no problem getting the tire replaced. You are far from the only person that has had this problem.

could it also be that when furd did the alignment they didn't center the steering wheel?? if that were the case then if u held the wheel centered the car would seem to be pulling to one side or the other...

BUT! It would keep pulling to that side when the tires were swapped.

Just out of curiousity, they are the same size, right? Have you personally checked to see?

Example.

205/60-15 = 24.69" tall
215/60-15 = 25.17" tall
difference = .47
15 revs per mile!

That would create a very noticeable pull. Double check your air pressure too. That would create problems as well. Ford should have checked that before the car got its alignment, but just in case.

This is the kind of problem you will always face with a buy it here, have it installed there approach. Owner puts himself at risk of being put in middle when problems arise.

Definitely a tire problem. It was called "radial pull" when I had it.

Problems with new tires that are not detected until you drive are not all that uncommon, or so I hear. I had one myself recently on our windstar...brand new tire seemed fine until 55 mph plus when vibration started to be noticable.

Agree w/horseydug...that's one reason I decided against going the tirerack route for my new tires.

I had a similar problem once upon a time. Turns out Ford wasn't aligning properly. What they were doing was putting the car back to factory alignment specs, and not actually doing the alignment for the front end/tire combo I was running. I almost had a conniption fit when I found this out. Luckily I wasn't using the car as my primary during that time period, or I would have gone to blows with the "whacked" tech guy.