My 04 Vibe (161,000km on odo) is starting to frustrate me The story so far:
We put on new tires a month or so ago, got an alignment and balanced all 4 tires. The new tires and balancing was done at Canadian Tire, the alignment work was done at the best alignment shop in town. After alignment, the car still occasionally (not always like before) pulled slightly to the right. Brought it back, they didn't see anything wrong, said it might be a balancing issue.
Took the car back to Canadian Tire, they thought there was a defective tire. They replaced the tire, rebalanced. But there's still same issue of occasional slight pull to right. By comparison, our 09 Vibe is dead arrow straight.
The other issue that may or may not be related--the steering wheel vibrates and even feels a bit "loose". What I mean by "loose" is that if I take my hands off the wheel, it kind of wants to turn a little bit left or right whenever it hits bumps in the road. Again by comparison, our 09 Vibe's steering wheel seems quite steady, remaining centered when it goes over bumps in the road.
To add to this, our 04 steering wheel vibrates *even when idling*. There's a bit of a vibration and noise present throughout the car, and the engine noise seems a tiny bit louder than I remember it being before, which of course indicates maybe some kind of exhaust problem. Again, our 09 Vibe has almost zero vibration when idling, almost silent. Idle RPM's in the 04 Vibe seem fine though.
So my wife, who works with the police, took the car in to the auto repair shop that the cops use for their police cars. You'd think this place would be half decent, and they apparently are a very reputable shop. My wife explained the problems, explained that we are going on a long trip in 2 weeks, and asked them to look everything over and see what they can find. These guys took the Vibe for a test drive, and said they couldn't find anything wrong. They did check spark plugs, said they were fine.
Even better--I hooked up an OBD device to the 04 to check. No codes thrown. OBD indicates nothing wrong.
So--strange *occasional* pull to right, vibration in steering wheel and car even at idle, "loose"-feeling steering wheel, slight increase in engine noise--but no engine codes and nothing a mechanic apparently could figure out. What does this add up to??
One note--in the middle of this whole saga, the car began shuddering violently during drives. It was a broken brake caliper (front left side). Replaced that. All the brakes were redone this past winter.