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About one month ago, I noticed that my car was driving as if there were really strong wind gusts buffeting the car around, but it was not windy out. Bad at any speed above 30mph. Don’t know how else to describe it. I'd steer to correct the “phantom wind” induced movement and the steering would not "catch" smoothly. I'd turn the steering wheel, nothing would really happen, and then suddenly it would swerve in the direction that I was steering. Unnerving.
So, I took it to a pretty good indie shop, and they found a bad left front outer tie rod and replaced it. Thanks to repair, car was totally out of alignment, so I had the front end aligned. Alignment went ok (different shop), they looked around and didn’t see anything that looked bad.
Now I have better steering, but it is still not well. Still get the wiggle feeling while driving. Also, while braking to a complete stop, if I let go of the steering wheel, it turns hard to the left from about 2mph until zero mph. This, in addition with an odd intermittent clunking sound from the back of the car makes me wonder what is going on.
I have stud snow tires on the back (gislaved nordfrost 3), three bags of tube sand in the trunk (225lbs), and nokian unidirectional snows on the front. I know handling is worse with my winter setup, (car understeers), but it was nowhere near this bad last year.
Could I have put too much weight in the back? Could it be rear suspension problems?
Its an 88 240 automatic with 140k miles on it, I bought it Feb 03 with 100k on it.
Here is the short list of repairs that might rule out some possible problems.
Feb 2005 new left outer tie rod and front end alignment
Aug 2004 new left front brake caliper (brakes totally failed cuz caliper froze up)
Jun 2004 replaced lower steering column u-joint (wouldn’t turn at low speeds), replaced rear brake pads, disks & shims
Apr 2004 replaced left rear emergency brake shoe
Jul 2003 replaced rear shocks with oem shocks
Any thoughts or suggestions would be very helpful! Thanks!
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