Yaris steering issues

[Lexcyn]

Hello all. I hope there is someone knowledgeable enough to answer my questions or put my mind to rest.

Anyways, I am the owner of an '07 Yaris CE hatch, auto transmission. It's been fine for the year and a half I've owned it, up until about three weeks ago. I don't know what happened, but ever since then the steering has been messed up. I will try and explain it as best I can:

The steering wheel is off-centre
The car pulls to the right
The steering is harder to turn to the right than it is to the left

To me this sounds like a power steering issue. I've been reading up on this and it would seem like it needs to have a zero point calibration done on the EPS ECU. Am I correct in assuming this?

So far I've brought it in to my local Toyota dealership four times, and they keep telling me it's fine, which is BS because it's almost impossible to drive at higher speeds.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know! I am scheduled to bring the car back again on Monday, which will be my last visit to this dealer if they don't fix it.

PS: My car is still under warranty.

[RningOnFumes]

This may be a stupid questionid you ride along with them while they are driving to show them the problem? And/or you drive and duplicate the problem in front of them?Either it is what you say or an alignment issue.Do you remember hitting a curb just a bit hard, or maybe ran over a very deep pot hole? Anything that may have jarred the suspension?

[Lexcyn]

Originally Posted by RningOnFumes

This may be a stupid questionid you ride along with them while they are driving to show them the problem? And/or you drive and duplicate the problem in front of them?Either it is what you say or an alignment issue.Do you remember hitting a curb just a bit hard, or maybe ran over a very deep pot hole? Anything that may have jarred the suspension?

Yes, I did take a ride with the tech but he said he thought the steering feel was fine. They did do an alignment bit that did nothing except make the steering wheel even more off-center.

The roads here are quite bad, however I try and avoid all larger pot holes, and I can't recall hitting a larger one. That being said, they did check my tires, suspension, etc, but they found nothing wrong. Or as the Toyota people like to say, it was 'within specs'.

[Lexcyn]

Well after another visit to the dealer, the service manager came for a ride with me and did notice the strange steering behavior. They took out my steering rack and tightened something that came loose (I don't remember what they said), plus did a 4-wheel alignment and now all is well.

[RningOnFumes]

Sweet.

[thebarber]

what is your location?