I just bought a 2003 Aniversary Vette with 13,000 miles on it. The car drives straight on the highway and roads but sometimes when I am braking, the car pulls left or right. It doesn't happen every time I brake. Sometimes I can brake 10 times in a row with no issue. I feel the pull sometimes at 35 MPH or lower. If I let go of the wheel at 5 MPH when I feel the pull, the steering wheel will turn 180 degrees. I have brought it to two Chevy dealers with this problem. I have videos of this. They are at a loss. One dealer suggested replacing the steering rack. I did that with no change. I have bled the brakes, checked the calipers, raised and lowered the tire pressure, checked the brake hoses, had the car aligned at least 4 times, unpluged the steering rack sensor and there are no codes in the computer. This action sometimes happens on some bumps or a crown in the road. Again, it will go left or right. Where this car has had the pulling, I have driven our other cars at the same spots and their wheels never pull. My concern is will this happen during a hard emergency stop.

 

Did you get a refund from the steering rack replacement!? That couldn’t have been cheap.

if this was my car, I’d replace pads, rotors, and inspect and rebuild calipers if necessary, replace tires and inspect wheel bearings.

13,000 miles sounds like the problem to me. Sometjing is either seized or warped.

 

I bought a reconditioned rack for $450. If it was the caliper or the pads, it should happen every time. After each time of pulling, it brakes good right away.

 

The tires look like new and the wheel bearings are good.

 

what is the date on the tires? If you google how to check dates on tires it’ll tell you how to read them.

 

the dealer recommended a fix. The fix didn’t work. GET YOUR MONEY BACK

 

The tires are from 02 and 03. They are Goodyear Eagles F-1, GS. Probally original. Again only 13,000 miles on them and no cracks in the side walls. As far as the rack goes, the dealer said this would be a crap shoot and I agreed to it. Aw crap!

 

Tires are suppose to be replaced every 3-5 years. You’re on 20 year old rubber! Replace those tires asap and then you’ll need a full rebalance as well. I’d start there!

I would also have the calipers fully inspected and lubed. The pins coils be dried out fully and only one side of a caliper is working, thus when you brake it pulls to one side. Caliper pins are supposed to be checked and lubed regularly!

 

You're sure this isn't an active handling problem?
Unplug the steering wheel position sensor quick and try again. Just to eliminate it as a possibility.

 

active handling issue would just happen when driving with no braking. And it’s only a sudden little jerk in the wheel. OP said the issue only engages during braking and the steering wheel is drastically affected.

 

I also want to add just check the tire sizes are correct.

Sorry if I read over information posted earlier. Eliminate the easy stuff first.

 

yep. Great suggestion.

 

Says who? An occasionally wonky caliper can cause this. Good news is these kind of thing tend to get less intermittent as time goes on. What is weird is you say it can be left or right... hmmm. A bad caliper won't go over to the other side of the car while you're not looking.

Instead of unplugging swps I would unplug whole ebcm module, no abs no nothing nada and see if it does it then. Although, problem could be not on electrical side of it but the valve/solenoid side.

People here are gonna bellyache about your deadly antique tires but that is probably not causing this problem. Same thing with tire size... if one was wrong (let's say you got three rear tire somehow) how could the car pull to left OR right like you describe??

... Well I'm looking forward to hearing the solution of this one, sounds interesting

 

It sounds alot like the SWPS is going out. When they start to go bad they don't always cause a DTC to set but, I would start with tires since it pull's both ways with the vette and not with your other car

 

When the car last got aligned I asked if they reset the SWPS and they said that they didn't do that. They only do it if asked. I have also thought of the ECBM. I will try to unplug it to see anything different. I have already looked up venders that rebuild them for $100 to $200.

 

I see that you have a 2003 based on your first post.
The 2001-2004 SWPS is fixed and cannot be aligned. The EBCM watches its output and automatically "calibrates" the center position as you drive. If you ever get the message "Active Handling Warming Up" this could be the EBCM trying to calibrate SWPS signals.

I'm immensely curious what the shop would do to align the SWPS... Having replaced my own, I would guess the would remove the whole steering column and adjust the SWPS at the base of the steering column. But this isn't necessary unless the SWPS slipped out of alignment (unlikely because it doesn't experience any loads to cause it to slip).

So, going out on a limb, it could possibly be a bad SWPS as @Smoken1 mentioned...
I've worked extensively with the '01-'04 SWPS, and found that my 2001's SWPS two signals were a bit out of phase (compared to 2 others I've had in my possession).
A couple years back my C5 had a random loss of traction event during 'normal' driving, and I wonder if my old "bad" SWPS was some part of the cause.
Perhaps your SWPS has suffered a similar fate to my old one. Diagnosing it isn't super easy without access to a Tech 2 or manually probing the wire harness. If you can do either of those, I can help with diagnosing it.

 

I did unplug the EBCM and drove it for a while. About 15 miles. That also turned off the traction control. I gunned it in a parking lot, 150 feet of rubber and lots of smoke. Never again. I don't need to buy tires all the time. The steering was tighter during my testing but occasionally it did the pull thing at near stops. A couple of monts ago I had eletrical work done on my rear window defroster and I mentioned the SWPS to the tech, and he said he could reset it. So I guess that is my next option.

 

There's nothing to "reset"
The EBCM automatically calibrates based on the SWPS signal it sees, it's quite simple really. And if it can't due to a signal error from the SWPS, it will throw a fault/code.

 

I got rid of the Goodyear run flats and put in Michelin Sport 4 tires. As soon as I left the tire shop, I could tell the difference. Problem solved. It was he tires after all.

 

Thanks for getting back to us, to let us know what happened. But I'd like to clarify something.......sort of. The problem, most likely, wasn't that your tires were GoodYears, or that they were run-flats. It's that they were OLD....20 years old!