74 duster pulls to the left, then centers, HELP!

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john_the_great

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My 1974 duster with a 318 and power steering will pull to the left after making a left turn and continue to pull til you hit some sort of bump, then it straightens out, meanwhile you are correcting so the car swerves to the right, very dangerous cuz it can cause the car to erratically change lanes. I have changed my power steering box, and it didn't help. I really want to drive my duster! Anyone have any ideas? Thanks
 
First thing to do is do some SERIOUS looking as to "what's loose." Put your dirty clothes on, and get a friend.

Jack up the car and block it under the lower control arms. This will "unload" the spring pressure on the wheels, tires, and ball joints. Now you can take a small bar and wiggle and pry on various parts of the suspension, look for slop in anything and everything.

Forcefully wiggle the idler arm up/ down. Basically it should not move, at least not very much. Have your friend help Forcefully "horse" one wheel at a time left/ right, while you are under there looking for movement in the joints. and tire rod ends, any joint that moves or swivels is suspect.

Is it possible you have the box "off center?" That may amplify the problem

Harder to check is the lower control arm bushings, because they are under tension from the torsion bars. It would be wise to count the turns, and back off the lower arm adjusting bolts until they are "slack." For this you'll have to jack the car up and support it on the body stub frames. Once you get the torsion bar tension relieved, pry and wiggle the lower arms, looking for slop, cracks and so on

Leave nothing "out of the picture." Upper and especially lower control arms can wear out and or break or crack. Even the K frame can crack and flex in some cars

Tires. Even poor tires--tires that you cannot see any evident problem with-- can cause horrid handling problems. You might borrow a pair to see if it changes the symptoms, AND IF YOU ARE running mis-matched tires from front to rear, this can be a factor.

(We once had a new pair of tires put on my bosses then- nearly- new Dodge pickup and it felt like it was going to "go around" going down the freeway. He finally had me go back and replace all four. Didn't matter as to tire pressure, either)

From your description of the symptoms you have NO BUSINESS driving this car until IT IS FIXED
 
I would say check your ball joints, maybe they are binding up causing your steering to stick like that.......
 
I thought it was my steering box at first, so i changed that out. I have muscled around my ball joints and my control arm, they are barely worn but in a lot better shape then some i have driven. I also made sure none of my brakes sticking, and my wheel bearings... although i am running crappy mud/snow tires in the front, with a set of ancient Concorde trac-action 60's i found in a garage in the back.
 
Frankly, mismatched, crap tires could be 99% of your trouble.

I can still remember one winter when "I was poor" (well, moreso than I am now) I thought I could 'get by' putting some recap bias ply snow tires on the back, after all---I was only going to use it "around town, right?" Had radials on the front, these recap bias on the back

At 25-35 mph, I thought that darn thing was gonna waltz right off the road. It was incredible -- incredibly bad, that is.
 
I have collected some new intel on the problem I am having, i test drove it again at slow speeds and I went around a left turn under acceleration, when i straighten out and it started to pull left it also made a tire squalling noise until it straightened out, any ideas?
 
Inspect the control arm bushings closely.
 
Pay extra close attention to the lower bushings and the sleeve where the pin goes thru the x-member.
 
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