C 220 cdi steers to the left - this is usual?

[bulldoze]

I have just had a proper drive of our 55 C 220 CDi Avantgarde that has done 23k miles and it steers to the left quite drastically, I have tried it out on a few different roads and if I take my hands off the steering wheel it will veer into the kerb within 40 yards @ 50mph.

This is a car that was bought used 2 days ago from Mercedes dealership and has had all the pre sale checks and stuff. My wife just phoned the dealer and our salesman was not there but his line manager just said 'veers to the left? well Mercedes do tend to do that'



I am staying quite calm until we get a call back, but needless to say my initial good impression of the car and the service we have been given so far has just nosedived.

 

[jaymanek]

They do "tend to do that" but if it is very very noticeable then tracking may be out.
Obviously they will put it right im sure.

 

[Rory]

Do a forum search for drifts left or similar.

They can be very camber sensitive - try to find a road where you can drive on a right sloping camber and see if it drifts right.

Swapping the front wheels over on my car helped quite a bit, but probably due to the NSF outer edge wear being swapped to the OSF and tending to correct the drift.

I think mine is pretty bad but the dealer told me it's better than most.

 

[bulldoze]

Thanks for the quick reply Jay,

Just had a look at your site and noticed you are located in Nuneaton. I will keep you in mind when it comes to service time as you are only a couple of miles from us.

I do find it worrying that such a reputable manufacturer as Mercedes would produce a car that veers to the left. I used to own a 2001 SLK and never noticed any steering tendencies with that car.

 

[Dryce]

I have just had a proper drive of our 55 C 220 CDi Avantgarde that has done 23k miles and it steers to the left quite drastically, I have tried it out on a few different roads and if I take my hands off the steering wheel it will veer into the kerb within 40 yards @ 50mph.

I found that my car did this. Noticed it first because I was getting fatigue in one of my arms on long journeys. If I drove past a slip road on the motorway and let the car steer itself it would quite happily drift over and leave the motorway. Some tests in a car park driving the same line in each direction demonstrated that it wasn't camber related.

It took two goes to fix it. First time they checked the tracking and changed a tyre. That didn't work.

Second time they did the tracking again and adjusted the front suspension. Upside - car tracks straight. Downside the steering is more sensitive. Upside the steering is more sensitive.

My guess is that 'they all do that' or blaming it on road camber makes the customer go away in most cases. Playing with the suspension geometry on a modern MB saloon seems to be a black art and is time consuming - and even if they play with it the customer may well end up still unhappy.

 

[bulldoze]

I did notice that there was more wear on the right front tyre than the front left (6mm vs 9mm roughly) when I pointed this out to the salesman when we picked the car up he just said it had probably had a new tyre fitted recently.

 

[Meldrew2]

My 51 C200K doesn't pull at all. If the dealer says "they all do that" just reply with "ok - give me a refund and I'll buy a Lexus. They don't do that"....

The last vehicle I had that pulled to the left was a Chevette - second hand - and it turned out the vehicle had been badly repaired after an accident and the wheelbase was almost 1 inch shorter on the left hand side.

 

[rf065]

Mine does too, wide low profile tyres tend to be very camber sensitive which doesn't help.

While mine pulls slightly left driving normally, if I move to the opposite side of the road where the camber is also opposite, it will also pull to the right.

If I change to my set of winter tyres, it does not pull left or right, but after fitting the summer tyres back on, it instantly pulls left again.

So far I have concluded Continentals Sport Contacts & Goodyear F1's pull to the left, but Vredestein Wintrac winter tyres do not, and any tyre that pulls left will also pull right depending on the camber. Not sure if there is an answer to this.

Russ