Since owning my 82, I've noticed the rear portion of the car seems to drift towards the outer turn when turning. I've checked for play with the bearings and yoke and they seem fine. The wear on the tires also appear to be fine. This may be my imagination or normal for the car. Would appreciate anyones insight with the matter. Thanks in advance.

 

Bill,

First welcome to the forum and secondly I’ll offer a few things to look at and maybe my bump will get another members attention and they will post their thoughts as well.

Drifting can be caused by the items you have already checked and it can also be caused by a few other things.

You indicated the tires were wearing fine so I would eliminate shock absorbers from your list but I would also check them. They are easy to check just in case.

I think I would look at the front trailing arm bushings and make sure the bushings are not worn and quite possibly I would also check the rear spring on the car.

If the car is equipped with a rear sway bar I would also take a good look at the bushings at the trailing arm as well as the two where the bar is attached in the center.

Did you check the strut rod bushings? If worn out they too can cause movement in the rear suspension.

Aside from these things, you have pretty much eliminated everything else.

I’ve told people this in the past and it always seems to hold true. Your car is like your body. You drive it every day and when something is not feeling right you should listen. Only you know your car and how it used to handle vs. how it is handling now! More times than not, a change will get noticed.

Willcox Inc

 

Many thank yous for the advice. The shocks look pretty old, so I think I'll start there and order a set of Bilsteins. I'm also going to be looking very closely at the bushings this weekend. Thanks again.

 

It sounds like what you are describing is normally termed 'oversteer'. If you are talking about cornering at 80 mph that might be expected, but if you are cornering at 20 mph that shouldn't happen. Vette's have 4-wheel independent suspension so if something is out of whack at any corner or combination of corners of the suspension the handling will be affected.

If you could post some pics of all of your suspension components someone will be able to advise you further. As useful as the Internet is, it's too difficult to diagnose problems with word descriptions only.

For example, my 72 used to dart to the left whenever it accelerated hard. Pretty exciting on a 2-lane road with oncoming traffic! In addition to all of the suspension bushings being worn and cracked, the combination of worn trailing arm bushings and a missing C-clip on a differential yoke turned out to be the main problem.



Rick B.

 

Many thanks Rick.