[whereswally606]

Please Help,
Recently I had a knocking noise coming from the passenger side when I applied full right steering lock and turning a corner. I took it to my local (non-Nissan) garage for replace where they diagnosed a broken top strut mount and also replaced that and the large plastic bearing.

When I got the car back I noticed after taking it on the motorway that when traveling accelerating from 60 to 70mph a large amount of torque steer and then similarly a negative torque steer effect when the regen was applied when I came off the accelerator.

The car was returned to my local garage who again checked all the steering and the alignment. They again replaced the top bearing as it was making noise again with a second new bearing which stopped that noise. The torque steer is still very bad.

I have taken it to Nissan Westway in Altrincham UK and they have done their preliminary first hour of diagnostics but couldn't isolate the issue. Their first suggestion is to get the 4 wheel tracking alignment done and see whether that solves the issue. I do not have confidence this is the cause as my own garage already did this. I have allowed them to proceed with this to satisfy their own diagnostic procedure but I am concerned that the cause is elsewhere. They have called to say that the garage who they sublet the 4 wheel alignment wouldn't touch the car and so they wont either. They state that they think it has been in a crash which it hasn't whilst in my possession (I cant speak for the previous owner but nothing was mentioned) and that said it didn't have the torque steer issue before the top strut mount was replaced.

I have also noticed that the steering wheel when the car is driving straight is pointing slightly right. I have owned the car for well over a year and it was driving fine (no torque steer) before I took it in for the top mount repair.

So Nissan Altrincham have washed their hands of it, it will be going back to the local garage I used to do the repair. I hope that someone on here has some ideas as it makes a £6k car fairly worthless for resale when nobody seems to want to fix it.

It has soured me on EV's a little since the manufacturers don't appear willing to fix their cars. its like driving a apple laptop.

I reached out to Indra since they have fixed my heater previously and did a great job. Any ideas on this one Mike?

 

[Hermit Dave]

@Mike Schooling you around ?

 

[MetalHead]

It certainly sounds like your local has made some kind of mistake with the repair which probably accounts for official Nissan avoiding you. As this is suspension related I doubt it's really Mike's thing. There's nothing particular special about the leaf suspension.
It's should up to your local to fix it properly. Having two stabs at it already doesn't inspire confidence they know their a**e from their elbow though.

 

[Layzee]

OK so not knowing the history of your car a couple of things occur to me
1. The car has a misaligned rear axle which during a previous 4 wheel alignment someone has done their best to hide by adjusting it out.
2. during your strut repair they did a 4 wheel alignment and have set it back as it should be which has know shown up the previously hidden problem.
Have you had any uneven tyre wear issues ?

 

[whereswally606]

I was told by our local garage that they checked the alignment.

 

[Layzee]

alignment alone shouldnt cause torque steer though but the steering wheel being off centtre is a clue to misaligned rear end you need to get it on to a hunter laser alignment as used by kwik fit , black n round etc that is the only system that Nissan will accept the readings from.
I had mine done at black n round free to check only charge when they adjust it.

 

[donald]

I imagine it is a very basic issue that the toe-in is all to shit. Wasn't set properly and they haven't got a clue. No way the steering wheel should not be dead ahead if it was done properly.

It is very easy to check your toe-in and really is not a black art requiring special equipment, just kneel in front of you car (when parked, with the steering wheel straight ahead) and look very carefully down the edge of your tyres. Both tyres should be in line with the rear tyres, at the same time.

When parking the car, don't turn the wheel on the spot. In fact, just line it up ahead, and rock the car back and forth slightly without touching the steering wheel (else the springy in the tyres may distort the carcass).

It doesn't take more than a few mm too much toe in to give pronounced effects. There could be other issues, but until that is cleared up (and it is definitely out if your steering wheel is crook) then not worth looking at anything else.

PS, this is not an 'EV issue', this is just shit mechanicing.

 

[ElectricBeagle]

I would check the camber angles of the front tyres, and take a good look at the tyre wear. Camber angle - Wikipedia

 

[whereswally606]

unfortunately there is not a lot of adjustment on this suspension due to the simplicity of the design. Tyre wear is slightly uneven but nothing that would cause the issues that have been experienced.

 

[whereswally606]

My wife just drove the car back and insists the issue has not got worse. hard to know whether she is exaggerating or not yet.
VE12ZDU
this is a link to the visual inspection carried out by westway nissan

 

[ElectricBeagle]

B

unfortunately there is not a lot of adjustment on this suspension due to the simplicity of the design. Tyre wear is slightly uneven but nothing that would cause the issues that have been experienced.

But something has gone wrong with the simple design.. Swap the two front tyres to eliminate tyre wear as a cause. It would be interesting to find the centre of rotation of the tyres wrt contact area.

 

[donald]

Change all 4 tyres and make sure your toe in is straight.

Why is the undertray missing? What accident has it had?

 

[whereswally606]

the undertray was in the boot, because it was left off by the local garage since the car was taken straight to Nissan from there. There was nothing odd about that. Personally I don't think It had an accident. but I don't know. It drove fine for 2 years with no issues.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

Probably not relevant, but I had exactly this problem and symptoms with my first Prius. That went in for a recall to replace a component in the steering rack, and when I picked the car up the steering wheel was misaligned and it had really severe torque steer, especially when pulling off from a standstill. I took the car back and they claimed to have fixed it (a Toyota main dealer), but managed to make it worse, with the steering wheel now misaligned in the opposite direction. It went back yet again, only to come back pretty much the same as before. Strong words were had and I took it to Kwik Fit, who did an alignment check and gave me a printed report on all the faults.

I took this back to the Toyota dealer, told them to fix it in accordance with the report and refund the cost of the Kwik Fit check. Surprise, surprise, the car came back with everything fixed. About a month later, when cleaning the car, I found a carbon copy of an invoice to the Toyota dealer from Kwik Fit. It seems they'd realised that they couldn't fix the car (which wasn't even a year old) so they'd sent it to Kwik Fit.

I strongly suspect that the big tyre places are the best people to sort stuff like this, as they do it all the time.

 

[whereswally606]

Thanks Jeremy, that does give me a little more hope. I am getting frustrated by this. I don't know if anything has gone in the steering rack but it wouldn't surprise me given how its behaving. there wasn't a recall on it though, doesn't mean that it hasn't broken there.

 

[donald]

It's just toe in from the symptoms.

Find yourself a good tyre shop, get Goodyear Efficient grip and shot of those crappy Michelins you've got, get it all aligned. You will have your car back like it was.

 

[Jeremy Harris]

I agree with @donald on this, it's almost certainly just misalignment. That's all that was wrong with my Prius; the main dealer had screwed up the wheel alignment when replacing the steering rack, and couldn't work out how to set it up so it went in a straight line.

 

[Mr Edd]

Bit of a long shot but when I changed the drivers side wheel bearing on wifeys 14 plate 24 last autumn, the test drive afterwards resulted in some notable torque steer which wasn't there previously.
Resulted in much head scratching and made me revisit the job a couple of days later.

The only thing I found of interest was that I could noticeably change the camber of the road wheel when the 2 hub bolts were loose ( the ones that bolt the bottom of the strut to the hub carrier) as the holes the bolts pass through are fairly generous.

Iv'e worked on this type of strut on fossil cars before and hadn't noticed any issues but decided this time to let the car settle under its own weight before tightening the bolts up, and did both driver and passengers side for good measure.

The car returned to driving the way it had previously I'm pleased to say. I think by tightening the bottom strut bolts when the suspension was in full droop I may have inadvertently set in some more positive camber on the side I was working on, creating an imbalance .
Letting the weight of the car act on the components before tightening the bolts lets both hubs settle at a the same slightly more negative camber I would guess. Just a thought

 

[donald]

Camber doesn't usually have much of an effect, but what you are describing suggests it might impact castor too.

A car will pull towards the wheel with the higher castor angle.

 

[whereswally606]

I have had the alignment done yesterday. Hasnt made a difference. Have the car booked in to the egaragepoulton near blackpool uk. Simon there is going to have ago at fixing it. My guess here is yaw sensor needing recalibration