Car pulling to the left under acceleration

This refers to our older C3 which my daughter usually drives. It is a 110bhp 1.6HDi. It has 124,000 miles on it so is really not worth a lot, although nearly everything on it works as it should. My daughter told me that there is an issue with the abs light coming on momentarily when she drives over a bump first drive of the day, so I took iyt out to look at it. I took it over the worst bumpy road I could think of, and nothing. However on my way I decided to use a bit of the performance and torque that is available. So I ran it up to just shy of 2000rpm and put my foot down. To my surprise the car pulled quite hard left, then straightened up when I took my foot off. I tried several times with the same result. For info the tyres are Michelin with similar good tread depth and properly inflated.

I took the car into the place that usually work on it and explained the symptoms. The chap there told me that it is due to the unequal length driveshafts (I am aware of that) but it seemed rather vicious for that. The car feels perfectly normal at the usual fairly gentle driving. I'm wondering whether it's worth looking at or we just accept it and see whether there are any issues at MOT time in August.

routemaster1 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:59 pm The chap there told me that it is due to the unequal length driveshafts (I am aware of that) but it seemed rather vicious for that.

I see you normally drive a petrol car and your daughter's car is a diesel.
I have not driven a diesel front wheel drive car but because of the extra torque diesels produce, particularly at low revs, I'd say it is torque steer and you are not used to it. Maybe some of the diesel drivers might comment on that? I'm not sure.
It could be a worn bush on one of the lower control arms but then it would tend to do it all the time. But it's possible it's on the way out.
Had any work done on the suspension?
Check how the ball joints are mounted on the lower control arms.
Car sit level? Uneven springs?
Check the position of the pin in the upper shock mount. It might be in the wrong position or the wrong mount(s).

Ozvtr wrote: ↑Sat Mar 20, 2021 4:12 am

routemaster1 wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 3:59 pm The chap there told me that it is due to the unequal length driveshafts (I am aware of that) but it seemed rather vicious for that.

I see you normally drive a petrol car and your daughter's car is a diesel.
I have not driven a diesel front wheel drive car but because of the extra torque diesels produce, particularly at low revs, I'd say it is torque steer and you are not used to it. Maybe some of the diesel drivers might comment on that? I'm not sure.
It could be a worn bush on one of the lower control arms but then it would tend to do it all the time. But it's possible it's on the way out.
Had any work done on the suspension?
Check how the ball joints are mounted on the lower control arms.
Car sit level? Uneven springs?
Check the position of the pin in the upper shock mount. It might be in the wrong position or the wrong mount(s).

I actually drove that car for the first 70,000 miles and I don't remember it being like this, and neither did I find it on our now written off 100bhp 1.6 C3 Platinum. I also have a 2.0 HDi 150bhp C4 Picasso, and once I had experienced this issue I tried it on that, and found no trace of torque steer.

Bit late to the table for this but for anyone with a similar problem........

A friend had this problem with a Daewoo. It didn't just veer, it leapt to one side! The obvious to look for is the engine moving due to the ''torque twist'' . In his case though it wasn't the engine mounts but the chassis had split on his 2 year old car.