whats up all?
a non-toyota owner here trying to help out a friend.
i recently had the "pleasure" of driving my neighbors camry the other day. Almost immediatly after pulling it out of the driveway i noticed a very annoying and possibly unsafe problem with her steering. I have lots of experiance under the hood of cars and have fixed most problems known to man. but this is something i have never seen/felt before.
rather than the the car reacting smoothly to the steering it almost seems as if it hits spots where the steering kind of takes over for itself. for example, if i'm making a right turn the car will start to go into the turn fine then all of a sudden it will pull SEVERLY in that direction. then it will be back to normal. another example, switching lanes on the highway at first it will start to move over slowly then all of a sudden it will grab and i'll be in the other lane trying not to drift into the next lane. (the problem happens vice-versa also) even while driving straight there seems to be WAY to much play in the steering wheel.
at first i chaulked it up to an alignment (which i am still sticking to) but i've never felt a car this bad just because of an alignment. so being the nice guy i am i offer to jack it up and take a look underneath.
once up, everything looked and felt fine, except when i got the the right side and gave the axle a good shake and noticed a bit of play, almost like one of the u-joints is going. so right now i'm sticking with that diagnosis....
just looking to see if anyone has had this problem or if it a common problem with these cars (the axle going)
the car is a 97 LE with approx 130k on the clock (and she drives it like an F-1
)
thanks in advance
Linear Mode
