stiff steering

[OG-Lou]

Hoosier
.....the car "wobbles" side to side when driving slowly through the parking lot at work.

It the tires are radials the tires are out of round unless they are built on nylon cord bias ply (1960 versions) and cold.

Lots of radial tires are out of round and some get that way as they age.

Random pulling left and right..... I am thinking of having tires rotated/rebalanced to see if anything changes.
Balance would not be the problem with pulling. If a tire had ply steer (a belt in the tire not vulcanized together) it would pull to only one side, not right and then left. Rotating tires (front to rear) would be worthwhile if you did it yourself just to see if anything changed.

Regarding the stiff steering, I would jack up the car and disconnect the outer tie rods and manually pivot each strut to the full right and left and determine if they both turn freely and listen for noises. Also check for any looseness in the struts or strut mounts.

I had a car that did what you described. It turned out the sub-frame was bent and I replaced several items but the car never did track correctly. Was the car in any accidents?

I worked in a tire and alignment shop for 20 years but never did frame measuring or straightening.

[Hoosiertrucker]

I took the car to Walmart tire center on Monday morning, they told me that my rear tires were cupped extremely badly on the inside shoulder walls of the tread (Which would explain the "thrumping" sounds I'm hearing out of the back)

They said it was due to what they believed (without actually looking) that my rear shocks were bad. I was told by another tire shop that my shocks and struts looked fairly new. I got the car back home, and looked closely at the rear of my car, and it seems to me that the rear tires have quite a bit of negative camber to them, and that they are riding primarily on the inside shoulders of the tires. I am going to order new tires this Friday, and when they come in, I will take it to the local tire/alignment shop, have them install the new tires, so that they can see what is going on with the old ones, and do an alignment, which should include camber adjustment on the rears, correct?

I've had no trouble with ride quality out of any part of the car, and I believe that as long as the rear shocks aren't rusted out, or weeping that they should be ok. I did a jounce test on the back of the car, and that seems fine.

As for the car having been in a previous accident, I have no idea, as I bought it used from a dealership, but the vehicle history report says no accidents reported...I did look under the front of the car at one point, and noticed that the subframe rails look good and straight, and no signs of accident damage.

In all actuality, the car only seems to pull to the right, and the pulls to the left are just me slightly over correcting it.

The car has the standard 185/60R14 radials on it, but with all of this going on, I did notice that the rear tires are a completely different brand than the fronts, so obviously the previous owner had issues with the rear tires going bad, and opted for the 2 tire solution, was probably told the shocks were bad, and was talked into new ones at some point without ever getting alignment, or camber checked.

Speaking of camber, I have seen online that they have "camber shims" for sale. They are round, sun shaped plates. Do I need to get some of these before getting the camber checked?

Thanks for the help with this, OG-Lou.