e30 pulls to one side - Driving me insane.

In reply to irish44j:

I redid the whole rear end of the car and I feel that I would have noticed the wholes being ovaled. I cant say with 100% certainty but working with very tight tolerances on a daily basis + being somewhat ocd I believe I would have seen it. I am gong to try to check, but its a big pita as the bolts would have to come off to check.

I made sure I centered the rack when I installed it. If its a 2.7 turn lock to lock, I have 1.35 turns from ctr until it stops turning at either side. The ocd thing again

I do have M3 lollipop bushings for added caster. I did install them properly aligned to the lollipop.

What about defective rear subframe and rear trailing arm bushings? Those are the only parts I did not source from BMW. They are Lemfolder.

So far to be checked:

Caster
Rear trailing arm tabs on subframe.
Possibly trailing arm bushings.

I would say that bad (loose)bushings in the rear would tend to alter pull with throttle application. Rear toe could do it.

Yeah slop in the rear would change with power/braking, IDK about "Lemfolder" but I think Lemförder is an OEM so that should be good stuff.

Slippery wrote: What about defective rear subframe and rear trailing arm bushings? Those are the only parts I did not source from BMW. They are Lemfolder.

Dumb question, but did you load the car to ride height before torquing down the rear trailing arm bushings? If not, you might have some preload from the bushings being in a bind.

An alignment is only as good as the tech doing it. I'd get another opinion there, too.

Edit: sorry if you already mentioned this, but did the car track straight before all the suspension work? Did new front lower control arms make the parts list?

Tyler H wrote: Dumb question, but did you load the car to ride height before torquing down the rear trailing arm bushings? If not, you might have some preload from the bushings being in a bind.

Not a dumb question at all, any rubber suspension bushing with a bolt running through it's axis of rotation should be torqued down at ride height. The only movement is usually in the flex of the rubber (the rubber is bonded to both sides) so asking for too much travel from one results in either binding or outright failure.

NickD wrote:

iceracer wrote:

NickD wrote:

Slippery wrote:

NickD wrote: You should have half a degree more caster on the passenger side than the driver side to account for road crown.

The problem with the caster on the e30 is that it's not adjustable.

How is caster not adjustable on a RWD car? I can understand on FWD cars where it really doesn't have any bearing on how they drive, but RWD is a big deal

Not true. Caster has as much effect on a FWD as it does on a RWD car.

I've driven a number of FWD cars with caster way out and never had an issue. Including a Malibu with 4 degrees more caster on one side than the other that drove perfectly straight down the road.

Likewise. Front wheel drive seems to be really insensitive to caster until the change is massive, or one side has flipped signs. (Because this is not the 1960s, this means one side has gone negative)

I'd want to see what the rear toe is like. Sounds like a significant thrust angle to me

One this that is annoying about E30s in general is that you have to align them with their normal load in them. I always did them by sitting in the driver's seat, then used the alignment rack's remote control to enable the "raise front wheels" option. Then get out, lock in the setting, adjust everything, then get back in and disable the option, print it, and done.

Never had a problem. Toe and camber would change massively just from having someone in the car, and this way was easier than the BMW-approved method of putting calibrated weights in the cabin.

irish44j wrote: btw, have you verified that your rack is actually "on center" when the steering wheel is straight? It's possible it was installed slightly off center (i.e. the splined section not centered) and the steering wheel just moved on its own splined section to compensate). Poor explanation, hope you know what I mean. i.e. When your alignment is good, are both tie-rod ends showing the same amount of threads from the inner tie rods?

Check this. I've suffered with this before, briefly, and it causes the same constant pull you're talking about regardless of toe settings. It creates an imbalance of leverage, just like a steering rack not perpendicular to the car's centerline would.

clearly the only thing left to check for is a haunting. Did anyone ever die a gruesome death in the car (perhaps the trunk?)

You mean it is not normal to find a pile of dead flies in the shape of a crying child's face on the hood of your car in the morning?

Make sure the front control arms match - I've bought an e30 that had one late e36 m3 control arm, which gave more caster on that side.

Sure a brake isn't dragging?

In reply to irish44j:

Had to redo a steering rack installed for this very problem on an old lexus 2 weeks ago. Symptoms were almost identical. Aligned perfectly but going down the road car pulled to the left instead of right.

Just to bring closure to this thread. The pulling to the passenger side got worse and worse as time went by, it really got to be extremely annoying as the steering wheel was always about 1/8 of a turn turned while on the freeway and I was still fighting it. 

I just broke down and bought four new Dunlop Direzzas last month. No more pulling, zero. The previous set of tires pulled from day 1.

When I had it aligned we tried moving the front wheel to the back with no change. 

I have about 1200 miles on the new tires and it still drives straight. 

Stupid tires. 

BTW, this update was possible thanks to the new search button ... found it on the first try of using it.