Does anyone else have this problem on badly grooved roads? Or is my power steering starting to screw up? I drove my buddy's Miata for a week while replacing my pressure plate and curing my tranny leak and when I drove my car again, the steering at highway speeds felt incredibly sloppy. I've also noticed it more at speeds of 80+ making it track all over the place. Does removing the PS help with this or should I just try to figure out if mine's acting up? I don't think the alignment is out. My tires wear extremely evenly and on a good smooth road the car drives perfectly straight in it's lane 1/4 mile down the road before needing the slightest correction. Oh yeah, I'm only using stock tire width but lower profile. It didn't seem to affect steering when I put them on 9 months ago though. Anybody?

 

Yes. Live with it. There is a combination of factors that affect it. There's not much that you can do about it.

 

Well that doesn't sound right that your tracks the road groove that badly. I mean it could be that your friend's car is newer so it feels tighter. My 7 has a stock manuel steering system and feels tighter than my 87 supra and 92 mx3. IF you have time i would just check the tide rod ends and lower ball joint just for the hell of it. But again doesn't sound right. But i could be wrong

 

Tires can have an effect in groove tracking. Back in the day that I had a 1st Gen the car drove perfectly when I first got it. There was no slop in the steering wheel and if it tracked in grooves in the road I never noticed it. About six months after I bought it I upgraded to 15" wheels with brand new tires. The car then tracked worse than any car I had ever driven. I think it was caused by the stiffer sidewall tires I bought.

It can also be caused by a bad alignment. Caster has alot to do with straight line stability. Have you had an alignment recently?

 

There is a city street here that has (for about 3 blocks) a groove in it that really isn't visible when driving. I always thought it was just my car behaving weird, until i road with my buddy in his camaro. He complained that his car always tracked right there, and figured it must be a pretty common problem for the road.

 

its the roads. Do you live in a climate that gets summere and winter(like cold and snow). Because the changing seasons screw up the roads and leave huge ruts. When I lived in BC my car went perfectly straight, but back here in Winterpeg and the shitty roads take me for a ride.

 

last year our low was -10 F somthing and our high was 112 F that count ? heh, i live in hell 10 months out of the year

 

I'm guessing its largely the roads I'm on, but maybe my car somewhat too. It has 147k on it and even though it's garaged it may have some parts wearing out. I thought the alignment was good, like I said it tracks straight on nice roads, but maybe its not? I plan to get new control arm bushings and the like when I get some shocks/struts but that isn't in the really near future so I wondered if anything else might help? Are Khumo 712's really stiff sidewalled that they would cause more groove tracking?

 

Do you have aftermarket wheels? I know that for a short period of time I had some shitty "prime" wheels on my car, and the damn thing was everywhere. It felt awfull. It had some decent tires on it, Im not really sure what the problem was, maybe just the heavy wheel. When I got the wheels I have now, the problem went away all together.

 

How many miles on the shocks? I had a similar problem on my TII, new shocks, same road, no problem. Old ones had about 60k miles on them.

Henrik
87TII

 

It's more a function of the tire than the suspension/steering.
If you've got a tire with a lot of circumferential grooves, it'll tend to track more.&nbsp If you run a tire with more horizontal grooves, it will tend to track less.&nbsp Run slicks on the street, and it should track even less.


-Ted

 

same happens to me... I now take a valium befor I drive my 88 vert anywhere and nothing bothers me LOL

 

If I only had the money for some of those nice A032's or victoracers That's interesting though Ted, how do you find out stuff like that?

 

Yeah I get it bad. It's much worse since I put 225 17's on from stock. Better grip, but unless the road is smooth it's darty. You just have to put up with it. It sucks when there's no shoulder, construction and the road is trying to spit you out into the adjacent lane.

 

You don't want to know...


-Ted

 

when i bought mine a couple of weeks ago, they tracked everywhere. scared the **** out of me.

i bought new hp tires at factory specs, and there's no problem anymore. what i thought was a case of bad suspension is also nonexistant. it's amazing what good quality tires do.