Steering Issue

[HavocX10]

Purchased a 2020 Max Platinum with less than 28k miles. One owner, dealer maintained, obviously hardly driven for 4.5 years. Sweet ride and loving it for the most part. However, I am a little freaked out with a steering issue I've noticed. At highway speed, seems to occur when in a gentle curve to the right, the steering will move slightly to the right on its own. Easily recoverable but still very odd and a bit scary if in a construction zone or some other tight situation travelling beside another vehicle with minimal room, I can see the potential for an accident. I have about 7 months left on the warranty but pretty sure it is drive train only, doubt it covers steering components. Gonna be at the dealer for a recall repair soon but want to have some better details from the community on what may be causing this random steering drift before I bring it up and get some wild dealer doom and gloom explanation with a ridiculous estimate. TIA!

 

[Fizzy]

There's a number of things this could be such as misaligned suspension, tire pull etc.

For tire pull, you can switch wheels around and see if persists. If you have unidirectional tires, then swap the rears to the fronts. If you have non-directional tires, swap the fronts over. Then test drive. Also, whilst you have them off, have a good look at the wear patterns on the front tires. And check the PSI to ensure they're the same.

My money though will be that you need an alignment done. The previous owner could have hit a bad pothole, curb, etc and thrown the alignment out. Should be about $100.

 

[Ugh_J]

Purchased a 2020 Max Platinum with less than 28k miles. One owner, dealer maintained, obviously hardly driven for 4.5 years. Sweet ride and loving it for the most part. However, I am a little freaked out with a steering issue I've noticed. At highway speed, seems to occur when in a gentle curve to the right, the steering will move slightly to the right on its own. Easily recoverable but still very odd and a bit scary if in a construction zone or some other tight situation travelling beside another vehicle with minimal room, I can see the potential for an accident. I have about 7 months left on the warranty but pretty sure it is drive train only, doubt it covers steering components. Gonna be at the dealer for a recall repair soon but want to have some better details from the community on what may be causing this random steering drift before I bring it up and get some wild dealer doom and gloom explanation with a ridiculous estimate. TIA!

Do you have lane-keeping assist enabled? If so, disable it and see if that goes away. These aren't perfect especially in corners, and are highly dependent on road markings from what I can tell. I have the same year and trim and it is also very good at keeping me from running off the right side of a lane but not the left side if the left edge markings are dashed lines and not solid. I have not, fortunately, had the issues in this one that my 2015 F-150 did where the collision warning would go off passing through certain intersections with no traffic in sight. Aside from the trans issues, I'm pretty happy with it. Likely because everything big thus far (trans rebuild/rebuild/replacement and cam phasers) was done under the 3y/60kmi warranty.

 

[HavocX10]

Looks like turning off the lane assist has resolved the issue. Seems the software may be somewhat flawed because at no time when the steering would seem to try to make an adjustment, there was nothing happening that required correction.

 

[Fizzy]

Looks like turning off the lane assist has resolved the issue. Seems the software may be somewhat flawed because at no time when the steering would seem to try to make an adjustment, there was nothing happening that required correction.

In which case, the camera needs calibration. The windshield could have been replaced and the camera not calibrated after etc.