I just replaced both my upper control arms on my '97 sedan and now it pulls to the right. I brought it in today to get an alignment but it still pulls. The shop told me the alignment was good that its a tire issue. I'm thinking its something to do with the control arms cause the steering feels spongey now and was fine until the control arm swap. If I turn the wheel to the left I can get it to straighten out but it eventually starts to veer to the right. The only thing I can think of is I didn't tighten the passenger side bolts enough that go through the control arm. I circled them in the pic below. The ones on the driver side were tight enough that when I tried to move them by hand you could feel the bushings spring back. I left the other side looser before I realized they were that tight on that side. Any ideas?

 

The alignment is controlled by the tie rod, so you shouldn't change the toe when replacing the control arms.

You want to tighten those bolts when the spring is in the resting state, but having the tire on and the car on the ground gives you zero room to access those bolts.

My suggestion is to tighten that bolt while the car is at its resting state.

Here is how I did mine. Jack the front of the car up on that toe hook. Put just the passenger side of the car on a jackstand on the pinchweld. Remove the tire. Put your jack under the lower control arm and jack up the control arm until the car just lifts off the jackstand. The spring is at its resting state. Then tighten those pivot bolts on the upper control arm.

If the control arm is still loose, then you will need to determine if the problem is the bolts or those bushings.

Good luck.

 

Step 1 is to make absolutely sure you got the R arm on the right (passenger) side of the car and L on the left (driver's) side of the car.

 

+1 ... in addition to Tony1M's sanity check, PAHonda's instructions are exactly how I did it when I installed the Eibach Pro Kit springs (30mm lower).

Yes, tires can always be a big factor in poor ride -- they can make you think you have bad suspension components or wheel bearings.

But if the car drove fine with these tires just prior to replacing the arms, then your problem should be in the control arm installation.

What brand control arms did you install? (If cheap ones, that could be suspect as well).

PS: Btw if you can DIY upper control arm replacement, you can also DIY toe-in adjustment pretty easily on these cars and save some money.

 

The bushing has a steel sleeve inside that the bolt tightens down on and should be pretty tight. It isn't like you compressing rubber and have to make a judgement call as to how much to tighten.
If you switched tires when you re installed them that could be where you pull is coming from.

How PAhonda mentions tightening the bolts is important as the rubber around the steel bushing acts as a spring that the control arm pushes against and is part of the suspension design.