Car pulling to the left

[Kulu21]

I am a bit worried about this.

I have an old Peugeot 206, 1.6. petrol (by old, I mean a T reg). For some reason recently, above about 25mph, even a very small amount of acceleration will pull the front of the car noticeably to the left - the faster the car is going or the greater the acceleration, the more pronounced is the veer.

Likewise, decelerating will pull the car to the right; again even a very small deceleration, like a relaxing of pressure on the accelerator pedal, will do it.

The upshot is that in trying to keep up with the flow of traffic, very small variations in speed mean that the car needs quite large control inputs. It has passed its MOT and all the work on the advisories has been done, but I really don't want to drive it until this gets sorted.

Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing this, and whether it is expensive to cure? So far as I know the car hasn't been any kind of accident.

All help will be really gratefully received.

Kulu21

[LunarOne]

Have you checked your tyre pressures?

[Kulu21]

A couple of months ago, but will certainly do it now.

[Trevor555]

First of all, swap the front wheels over to eliminate the tyres. See if it pulls the other way when they're swapped.

If that doesn't work then take it to a workshop.

It'll probably be a suspension bush that's gone, or steering related. A decent mechanic will be able to pinpoint it.

[E-bmw]

Check tyre pressures as above, get alignment checked, make sure brake calipers are all free and working correctly, get the ball joints/track rods checked out, have all front & rear elastometric suspension parts checked, & if all is right & it still does it it could be torque steer, don't know if these cars are prone to it or not.

All of the above should have been checked at MOT, but then just because it was right on that day doesn't mean it is now, has it come on since the MOT?

[Kulu21]

It was there before the MOT; I will check everything everyone has suggested. Thank you for that, I was wondering what had happened to it.

[anonymous-user]

One of my mx5s did this - pulled one way when acclerating and the other way when braking, bad enough that you could change lanes on the motorway just using the throttle. Turned out to the be the wheels were buckled, new tyres didn't help but swapped wheels and the problem was completely solved.