So for some time I've been struggling with a steering problem that I have. When I drive down the freeway, I'll sit on one side of the ruts that are dug in from other cars/studded tires etc. When I sit on the left side of the rut, the car will want to go right; when I sit on the right side of the rut, the car wants to go left. So pretty much the car wants to drive downhill. It's somewhat bad too because when I change lanes it looks like I'm a drunk driver and not driving smoothly.

The car is a 91 NA, 245/45/16 tires with spacers on the front. I really don't remember how thick they are, but I'll guess somewhere around 15mm. Tein coilovers and the car is lowered a good amount, but not enough to rub even with those tires on.



I was reading another forum about wheels/tires + spacers. Someone mentioned that spacers would affect steering geometry. Is this true? Is this where my problem is coming from? When I put my stock tires on, it still does this to some degree.

Should I be looking for something else? Like inside the steering rack? My tie rods were replaced a few years back + I haven't put that many miles on it since then. I don't think it's bump steer because I'm not hitting bumps when it happens.

 

Yes the spacers affect the steering geometry, as they decrease the offset of the wheel, which changes the scrub radius, which affects tramlining, the term used to describe what you're feeling. This is also amplified by wide and/or sticky tires.

The best bet to reduce it to a minimum is to run wheels with the most offset that you can fit. In your case that would mean running spacers as thin as you can get away with without rubbing. That should help the problem, but it will never go away completely.

 

Okay. I figured it was something like this. Luckily they are my track tires and not my street ones. Interesting though.