So I finally got rid of my stock 16" tires and rims and got 18" FK452 225/40/18 tires with Enkei EKM3 rims. It looks great. I noticed, however, that when my steering wheel is straight, the car tends to slowly pull to the left. I have to keep my steering wheel slightly to the right in order to keep the car straight. Is it because I have to align after getting new tires? The shop didn't tell me anything about it.

And here's a pic if you guys wanna see how it looks. (Yes, I need to lower it... and wash)

 

yeah re-align dude. I mean, alot of em (mine included) will do that initially, but if it is really noticable like it is in urs then i would get it taken care of sooner.

 

ok thanks. I know it's bad for the tires and they will wear unevenly, but how bad is it? I still want to lower the car, and after I lower it I'll probably have to realign again. So will there be any damage if I stay like this for a week or two until I lower my car then align?

 

it all depends how severe it is. If you just don't run it that hard or often, you should be fine.

 

These cars seem very sensitive to tire wear, if your tires are worn slightly more on the left side it will pull to the left. Mine did with the stock 18" wheels because the front left tire wore faster than the rest. Try rotating the tires and if that doesn't help take it in for an alignment, or at least have the alignment checked.

 

The wear shouldn't be too bad for one or two weeks unless you plan on driving it for a long distance or very hard or something. Mine came with a little pull to the right and it still hasn't really caused any unusual tire wear after 28K miles. I haven't swapped out rims, though, so I don't know if the new wheels/tires you installed would be more sensitive to alignment woes than the stock wheels/tires.

I've just been too lazy to get mine aligned (and the potholes here would probably re-ruin it anyway). Maybe I'll get it done when I put nicer tires on.


ETA: D'oh! Old post. Sorry about that. I'm guessing all the work's already been done.

 

This pull issue seems to be ongoing with Lancers. There used to be a thread with over sixty pages of posts of people with an 08+ Lancers that had this issue. I have the same issue as well. I would take the car in to get it aligned, and it'd be near perfect, every time, but I'd still have the pull. Then I thought that it was my rims, because once when I had my tires rotated, it started to pull to the right instead, which left me all kinds of confused. I'm upgrading my factory 18" rims when my tires wear out, and I'm curious to see what'll happen.

Let me know what you find.