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my car always pulls to the right when i'm driving. a week ago my tire went flat and i ended up riding on the rim for about .5 mile. ever since i got it fixed, it'll go to the right. what is it? i took it in twice, once to have the tires rotated, and second to have them aligned, but they told me they needed to be balanced, not aligned. what do you guys think?

 
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Probably need to be balanced, although, all 7th gens, have torque steer that pulls to the right under hard acceleration mostly with aftermarket rims. Does this only happen to you then or all the time?

 
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it always pulls to the right. yeah, i do have aftermarket rims, but it didn't start doing this utill about a week ago. i also had them balanced, but it still didn't help. i'm confused.

 
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If it's always doing it, then it's either a balance/alignment issue or the wheel got bent during that time. If it's only under acceleration, it's just torque steer, I would have the wheel and tired professionaly balanced and then a 4 wheel alignment if its doing it all the time.

 
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alright. thanks.

 
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Did you have to get the tired changed?? Or is it the same tire, just that it is now fixed? Because if they changed your tire taht could be the problem.

I had the right front tire on my 02 Si slashed. When I went to get the tire replaced, I told them the size, brand, and name of the tire I needed. The Si has 195/60R15 88V Michelin MXV4 tires. They put on a new tire and I looked at it right after I got the car back and the tire was completely different than the one I had before. It was a 195/60R15 88H Michelin MXV Energy Plus. First of all, the tire did not look the same and the mismatched pair bothered me and then it was a different model of the same line and had a totally different type of tread. Not just that, but it was an H-rated tire while the rest of my tires were V-rated. It was a completely lower model tire with a lower speed rating and that bothered me. Before I left, I asked the guy at the tire store if that would cause any problems. He assured me that it would be just fine and to not worry about it. So as soon as I left the parking lot, I almost crashed because the car pulled very hard to the left. And the faster I went, the worse it got to be. So I went right back and told the guy about the problem and he said, "Oh yeah, I forgot that if you use Michelin's with different treads that that can happen." So I waited until the next day when they got the correct tire in to get replaced. Then I did not have that problem at all. So watch out for that if you have a problem with just one tire and need to get it replaced.

Unfortunately for me, it was one tire that was almost $180 and I could have probably bought a lesser tire for a lower price and bought them as a pair so that wouldn't happen, but the car only had about 4500 miles at the time. Still pretty new and definitely too early to replace the other tire when it was still in good condition.

Another thing I would check if I were you is that both right and left front tires are inflated to the exact same psi. Because after I had my tire changed, the psi of the new tire was higher than that of the old tire and caused it to pull to the left as well, but just not nearly as hard as it did when there was an unmatched pair of tires in front.

 
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Mad Beat is right about a tire causing a car to pull to one side, but a out of balance tire will not cause a car to pull. Only Caster and Toe and way out of spec Camber will cause a pull.