I had a problem with my 4 month old Fabia vrs veering to the left when holding the steering wheel straight, i had also noticed some tyre wear on the rim of one tyre. I immediately took it to my local skoda garage and had the wheels re-alligned, however they informed me that the rear wheels were so 'off' that they could not rectify the problem. They asked for 25quid all the same.

They said they had performed geometry checks etc and all i could do was take my new car elsewhere for 4 wheel laser allignment. They also insisted that this was a normal occurance for my tracking to be out even on a car so new, explaining that potholes are to blame and tracking may be required 3-4 times a year. This all sounded odd to me and wanted to know whether anyone else has been told this or suffers similar problems.

the only reasons that the rear wheels are so 'off' is that either the stub axle and/or axle beam is bent on the rear suspension beam bushes are shot or missaligned

Cheers for quick reply. I'm worried that might be the case but can't understand why anything should be bent, i've only driven 5500 miles from brand new and haven't hit anything other than potholes but don't we all. Would the skoda mechanics not have spotted damage when looking underneath the car and doing geometry checks?

I've booked my car in to have 4 wheel laser alignment and just hope that solves the problem.

a rear beam axle which is only slightly bent would be almost impossible to spot by just looking at it , 4 wheel alignment will tell you exactly where/if its bent

Ah rite well at least i'll be able to find out if theres a problem. Not looking forward to being told i have a bent rear beam axle though. Is this a common problem? How much does that kind of thing cost to fix? Don't really know why it would be bent in the first place, i always take my time on speed humps etc and never mount curbs. Cheers for reply

After 4 wheel laser alignment i was told that only the front wheels were out and these were corrected. This dramatically improved the situation however i still notice that the car pulls to the left. I took it back where alignment was done and was told that the 'pulling' is caused by the tyres not the alignment, i was told that the tyres have worn un-evenly and have created a bias to which pulls the wheels left. Is this a legit explanation or am i being fobbed off? He said the only correction method is to change tyres or put up with it until a new set is needed or until the tyres begin to be worn evenly. Any help is much appreciated.

Is the worn tyre on the front or back? If on the front, try swapping the wheels front for back on each side and see if the problem is reduced further. Regardless, I would be prepared to accept the explanation about uneven wear on tyres causing the car to pull until I proved otherwise by fitting new tyres.

He referred to the front tyres as being worn and they were the ones i noticed the wear on in the first place.

yeah i've thought about either swapping front and back like you sed, or even swapping left and right wheels, although it then might pull to the right so was more of a test of the tyre wear story than anything. I'll prob just try front to back swap. Cheers for reply as need to get to the bottom of this

if you swap left to right be carefull, only certain types of tyre can be used like that... most are directional which means they are designed to be used in one direction only

Good thinking, i had forgotten about that actually. Cheers