feeshta

I have 2 sets of wheels for my 2006 E55 Kombi. The factory wheels, which unfortunately have a mismatched set of tires front to rear, with Conti Sport Contacts on the front and Bridgestones of a model I can't remember at the moment on the rear. Tires are factory sizes. I also have a set of Keskin KT-16 18x8" wheels with Pirelli Sottozeros in a 245 size front and rear for the winter months. Both sets of wheels have been checked for balance etc, I had to have one of the Keskins repaired but it is good now. No vibration from either set even at very high speeds now.

Now for the weirdness. As far as I can tell, the car goes pretty much dead straight on the factory wheels, but as soon as you put the winter wheel set on, it pulls very noticeably to the right. Any thoughts what could be going on here? I have checked and rotated the winter wheels around, thinking maybe a slight difference in wear levels from side to side could cause it, but that had zero effect.

I'm just wondering whether the car needs an alignment or is there something I have not thought of?

ygmn

TIRES?

feeshta

The tires that make the car pull to the right were just all checked for balance and wear issues. They are relatively new, show very little wear, and no signs of anything being off.

The summer tires don't show uneven wear, but the front and rears are mismatched. Rears will probably need replaced next summer, but still have some life in them. Fronts look to have at least 75% tread depth left with no wear issues.

The front tires do have an odd cant to them. The wheels will not actually stand up on their own off the car. They want to fall over, but the angle seems to be a design choice by continental. Basically it's like having negative camber built into the tire.

s.i.f.i.

It takes not very much of a psi drop on a front to make the car pull one way or the other.

SICAMG

Could have a shifted belt in the tire that pulls. Have seen this many times and can be isolated by rotating the tires and moving the "pull" to the other side.

feeshta

All tires are at 35 psi. Checked twice.

As stated in the OP, I have already tried rotating the tires with no change in behavior.

Travis R

What is the offset of the winter wheels? A lower offset wheel would push it towards the outside of the car, giving the tire more leverage to affect the steering. Maybe there is a little bit of slop in a couple of the ball joints on one side, and the it's not noticeable until the aftermarket wheels are swapped on.

feeshta

I don't know for sure what the offset of the wheels is, as I didn't purchase them. They came with the car when I bought it a year ago. This style comes in either a 30 or 45 offset, but I have no information to confirm which one I have. Might be a way to tell with them off the car, but right now I don't know. I can tell you that it doesn't have any rub issues at all, and seems to be a rather conservative fitment, as the wheels are not pushed out towards the fenders etc.

I'm also not getting any of the issues I would typically associate with an offset that's out of whack for what the car was designed for. Handling is entirely normal steering effort might have become slightly lighter, but I get the same effect on my other car when I switch to winter wheels, most likely due to the lower overall traction levels. Everything is normal as far as I can tell, it just feels like the alignment is slightly off.

Das Geld 2

You’re assuming it’s one bad tire..what if it’s 2 bad tires in your winter set?

hyperion667

What is the weight difference between the two wheel sets? Might be a factor.

feeshta

I'm not assuming anything. But I can pretty much guarantee there aren't 2 bad tires. I doubt there is even one bad tire. It would almost certainty vibrate in some fashion at Autobahn speeds, and there is no vibration of any kind from either set of wheels and tires. Not to mention I just had the winter set checked at a tire shop and I can guarantee you they would have been trying to sell me tires if they had any remote way to try to justify it.

feeshta

I don't know the weights, but I can't imagine a scenario. In which that would cause a pull to the right that was persistent through a wheel rotation. Or really at all, unless the wheels on one side of the car were heavier than the other by a large factor.

hachiroku

my car pulls to the right a shade. i've had 3 alignments done and it cannot be corrected. don't recall having this issue with factory wheels. maybe both of our rubber bushings within our suspension are in need of replacement? different tires can lead to different traction characteristics based off design of tread.

feeshta

From the looks of things, your car has quite a few mods. Might be something not sitting correctly when lowered beyond factory spec. My car is bone stock with the exception of Poly rear subframe bushings I installed last weekend. They didn't affect the pull behavior at all, but did get rid of a bit of unwanted rear wheel steer feeling.

mondo

could be something similar to tramlining? different sets of tyres can perform totally different on the same road surface. does it only happen on particular roads, or everywhere?

feeshta

It happens on all road surfaces. It will even fight against a reverse tilt of the road surfaces on the rare occasions you find that.

mondo

maybe for ****s and giggles, have a tyre shop swap the tyres from one front set to the other and see what happens?

feeshta

Just a follow up in this. The issue finally got bad enough to track down. It was a bad inner tie rod on the driver's side of the car. The front tires that were on the car previously, Conti Sport Contact 2s i I remember correctly, had a tendency to put most of the weight on the inner edge of the tires, almost like they had built in negative camber. Winter tires did not, and recently installed Michelin Pilot sport 4S also do not and showed the same pulling behavior. Finally the problem got bad enough to start making a noise and I tracked it down.