After having the steering checked and rechecked on my XM without any change in the tendancy for the car to gently pull to the right I noticed that the offside front tyre was wearing unevenly on the outside shoulder. We checked the wheel bearings, brake pads and calipers, the steering again, (modern laser kit on all four wheels and a guy I know and trust) and again we could not find any problem. So I left it over Christmas and this morning decided to change the tyre in view of our dire weather warnings.
Nice trip back to the office and the tendancy to pull is all gone.
Phone call back to the garage, it is a local to home small ATS (and I am well aware that they do not have, deservedly, the greatest respect on this forum) to have a look at the tyre and see if they can spot a fault of any kind. The tyre under close inspection has worn unevenly both across and around the shoulder.
Back in the 70's when I had a very similar experience with the Rover Pirelli replaced the tyre free, sadly I do not expect the same to happen with this one.
Tyres can cause all sorts of odd symptoms, I know I should have swapped the tyres around but back and front had slightly differing tread patterns so the logic was to keep all as similar as possible. Hindsight is a great and wonderful thing
