As a lot of you guys know I have desperately been trying to get my car to drive straight again for awhile now and have tried basically everything other than replacing the steering rack.

I took the car to yet another shop this week and had it aligned to factory specs as well as do a steering angle relearn.

The car overall feels slightly better as far as steering response however it did not fix my issue of the car pulling to the car. The steering wheel still wants to turn right too easily.

I have decided to bite the bullet and replace the steering rack but before I do I wanted to get opinions on whether or not it is possible that the front cradle being slightly off position from the factory location could cause issue with the chassis geometry to cause the pull? I know there are alignment pins which position the cradle, but the tech noticed the cradle was slightly off from where it originally was. This is from when I had my balancer replaced and they dropped the cradle, which is when this issue also started. I would imagine an alignment would correct this, but maybe not?

 

I highly doubt replacing the steering rack is gonna make any difference.

Unless somebody installed the cradle really wrong, it shouldn't pull like that from having it removed. I've had the cradle off literally dozens of times on the cars I've owned and/or worked on and have only ever had one aligned once. Even without an alignment and my car trapping over 130MPH in the 1/4 mile I've never had an issue.

In reference to installing it wrong, it is possible that somebody may have not tightened the nuts incrementally and thus causing it to go back together in sort of a twisted fashion.

If you're mechanically inclined and have the tools here's what I'd recommend doing before anything else including an alignment:
- get the front of the car up in the air
- support the motor from underneath with a floor jack placed at the very back of the oil pan
- remove the two 18mm motor mount nuts
- jack up the motor just enough that you see it lift off the cradle
- loosen but do not remove all four of the 21mm cradle nuts

Ideally it would be preferable to have a transmission or floor jack underneath the cradle as you're loosening the nuts. The whole point of this exercise is to make sure it was installed cleanly because it should come down uniformly on all four corners. This will also give you the opportunity to eyeball how everything seems to line up.

At best this will fix the issue and at worst you'll just be back where you started.

Hope this helps.

 

Sounds like an alignment problem to me, plain and simple.

When I first bought my current Z06, it pulled & tram-tracked like a son-of-a-bitch! So I did a home alignment to establish a baseline and the first major thing I found was the REAR alignment was a mess. I found the centerline of the rear cradle, measured to the wheels and found that they were off by quite a bit, ie: imagine both wheels steered "right" for example, and while they were "parallel" (zero toe in/out), it was enough to cause the car to drive essentially in a crab-walk. So I centered the rear wheels (kept zero toe, or slightly toe-in) and that immediately made the FRONT compensate and suddenly the steering wheel was way off. So then it was a matter of re-centering the FRONT toe, which had been over-compensating for the messed up REAR.

In short, a messed up alignment can cause a car to handle very poorly. After I fixed my alignment, the car drove GREAT and didn't tram-track or bump-steer like it used to. It may take a bit of time, but I'd get somebody knowledgeable in alignment to ensure that everything is spot-on first, before swapping the steering rack. If anything, ZERO EVERYTHING - camber & toe. Max out your CASTOR. There's no reason that a well aligned C6 shouldn't track straight, if everything is set correctly. I cannot imagine that the CRADLE could be mis-aligned so badly that it would affect the alignment of the car (there's hardly any wiggle room with those alignment pins?!) and besides, the actual wheel alignment can compensate for that minor imperfection anyway.

Best of luck!

 

I appreciate the info, I will prob do this and make sure it’s not twisted

Yeah I see what you’re saying and you’d think it would be an alignment issue but I have literally had the car aligned probably 8 times maybe more, at 4 different shops. How in the hell could it possibly be in the alignment?! It’s just really strange because the wheel will not hold a center position. It feels like whatever stabilizes the steering wheel in a center position while on a level road is messed up because the wheel wants to turn to the right too easily if that makes any sense

 

the cradle holds the LCA's and rack, but ultimately it's how the upper and lower control arms are adjusted that determine your geometry to the road. If you camber and caster are symmetric and your wheelbase is close to correct (ie one wheel isn't swung forward/rearward excessively) I don't think the tire cares at all where the cradle is.

if it's pulling (not off center, but pulling) it's almost certainly an alignment issues or a tire issue. Road crowning also effects drivability of courrse

 

Its definitely not just road crown but when I hold the wheel straight the car drives straight but I do have to counter steer because the wheel does want to **** to the right at times.
I was just talking to a guy from a tire shop and he had mentioned that possibly the steering angle sensor is bad.

 

^ ^ That's definitely weird!!

 

It is, it’s so weird. Like I can go slow on a really nice flat road and the car will stay straight but when I’m on the highway it always wants to go right. I’m 100% sure it’s not just road crown. I don’t know what else to do at this point other than change the rack and maybe put a new steering angle sensor in, although I’m not sure how big of a job the sensor is. I’m actually going to take the car to a Chevy dealership tomorrow and see if there’s anything they might suggest. I’m going to see if one of their best techs will drive the car and give me their opinion.

 

Have the dealership check the alignment since they might be more experienced than independent shops on these cars. Then I would look at tires. It would be a bad tire causing the pull. I have had that happen on a different car before.

 

Buddy was having very similar problem couldn't get anywhere. So we came up with an idea, we had nothing to loose because he was so frautered. Get a digital thermometer. went on the hyw for many miles pulled over and to are suprise one of the outside tire was warmer then the other side, i forget but a significant temp difference. So we didn't care about the algiment. We adjusted the toe and sure enough he was good to go. It wasn't a one time adjustment it was trial and error. We had all the tools to make adjustments on the side of hyw. Just a thought

 

man you guys are desperate if you are getting Stealership alignments and relying on "trial and error"

Rotate the front tires and see if it moves, changes , or goes away.

 

My first thought was tires, but I have swapped sides with the front and rear tires with no change.

Yeah this is not a bad idea. How much difference did you end up with in toe from each side?

I’ve done this already, twice…. Made zero difference

 

Post the image of your last alignment.

 

This was last week

 

Camber isn't very aggressive front or rear, so that's not a problem. Caster is good. What I don't care for (personal preference maybe?) is toe-OUT. I would aim for 0° or toe-IN, esp. in the rear. Maybe I'm wrong, but for high-speed stability, you don't want toe-out. Toe-in would be better. That may not cure your pull, but IMO, it's not helping.

My car setup isn't super aggressive, although I'm running quite a bit more camber (around -2.4°F, -1.2°R), and close to ~0° or slight toe-in F/R. On the highway (multi-lane), the car is dead-nuts straight if I'm in the middle lane, whereas the steering will noticeably have to compensate depending if I'm in the left or right lane, based on the crown in the road. So that's the only thing ........ you need to know whether the pull you're feeling is on flat, neutral ground, or is it based on the crown.

 

It’s very difficult to explain but the pull I feel is basically all the time and it comes from the steering wheel wanting to slightly turn to the right when releasing the wheel. Even on a multi lane highway being in the middle lane if you are holding the wheel and driving straight and release the wheel it will slightly **** to the right and the car will pull right. I guess the best way to explain it is if I were driving on a flat straight road and slightly turn the wheel left it wants to quickly snap back to a neutral position instead of the car slowing drifting left , In the same scenario if I slightly turn the wheel right there is less effort and the wheel does not want to snap back to neutral and the car takes off to the right. Again, difficult to explain. I have come to the conclusion it pretty much has to be my rack. The passenger side mounting bolt was left totally out when my rack was removed to do a balancer change and I drove around like that for awhile. That had to put a ton of stress on the rack. I believe something internally had been damaged and the rack isn’t distributing fluid correctly, or something is slightly bent. I may be way wrong but that’s just what I think. Here are the alignment numbers that I tried prior to this most recent alignment, which made zero difference.

 

We didn't pay attention just what ever worked and u have to hold the steering wheel center or it moves when turning the toe.

The steering wheel moves instead of tire.

 

Did you ever get this sorted out?

 

Not exactly. Back when the car started pulling right I had just installed Z51 sway bars and Moog
end links (base model). So yesterday I decided to put the stock sway bars and end links back on and now the car is driving much straighter. I also put 32psi in both passenger tires and only 30 in the driver side tires.I still feel some right side pull but not nearly as bad as with the larger sway bars. My theory is that I have an issue with my steering rack and the Z51 sway bars amplified the issue. Back when I had my balancer replaced the shop left the passenger side rack mounting bolt and bushing out and I drove the car for a good while not knowing it was missing. I think it may have messed up the valving or something. But yeah the car def drives better with the stock sway bars, just has more body roll.

This is my most recent alignment numbers.