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#880988 02/23/04 08:44 PM
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fly44 Offline OP
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Ok, just brought my car into the dealer complaining of a slight steering wheel shake on centering the wheel, and the rear sway bar bushings making noise. They fixed the noise, and balanced the tires.

It felt good for mabye a day and now it might be drifting to the left again, but my roads are so crappy i can barely tell.

Now the shake is back. The balancing stopped my car from drifting to the left, but the shake remains.

It happens when the wheel is 2-8 degrees off center in either direction. It is extremely noticable and rapid when you are going through a long light turn. The wheel sort of shimmys left and right. Once past 10 degrees or so the shake slows to a less rapid frequency and eventually stops and the car behaves normally. It gets worse with more people in the car.

I just checked and one of my tires was about 5 PSI lower than the other. Filling it up and seeing if the problem disapears. *edit* Filled up both tires to 30PSI. Shake is less noticible on turning, but still present on centering the wheel.

Any ideas?

Last edited by fly44; 02/23/04 09:12 PM.

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Making any noise up front - moaning? grinding?

Check:

1 - Wheel bearings
2 - Tie Rod Ends
3 - Ball joints
4 - Control arms


Must be that jumbly-wumbly thing happening again.
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Originally posted by fly44:
Ok, just brought my car into the dealer complaining of a slight steering wheel shake on centering the wheel, and the rear sway bar bushings making noise. They fixed the noise, and balanced the tires.

It felt good for mabye a day and now it might be drifting to the left again, but my roads are so crappy i can barely tell.

Now the shake is back. The balancing stopped my car from drifting to the left, but the shake remains.

It happens when the wheel is 2-8 degrees off center in either direction. It is extremely noticable and rapid when you are going through a long light turn. The wheel sort of shimmys left and right. Once past 10 degrees or so the shake slows to a less rapid frequency and eventually stops and the car behaves normally. It gets worse with more people in the car.

I just checked and one of my tires was about 5 PSI lower than the other. Filling it up and seeing if the problem disapears. *edit* Filled up both tires to 30PSI. Shake is less noticible on turning, but still present on centering the wheel.

Any ideas?





I can tell you for sure your wheels cant be balanced properly and correctly if you dont have enough air in the tires. You will have to have them rebalanced, plus they are out of balance now because they wernt balanced with enough air in them.




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fly44 Offline OP
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Originally posted by TourDeForce:
Making any noise up front - moaning? grinding?

Check:

1 - Wheel bearings
2 - Tie Rod Ends
3 - Ball joints
4 - Control arms




Makes a bit of a whine at low speed manuvering, but thats about it.

^^ I'm not sure. I might have a slow leak in the tire. I am checking pressures again tommorow to make sure.

Last edited by fly44; 02/24/04 12:42 AM.

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my 99 se duratec mtx has started to do the same thing, but it began only after i had my tires rotated...im thinking they're not balanced, which is probly the same problem you're having. i just turn up the radio so i forget about the wheel shake (haha). but i do believe for me it's either uneven tire wear, under/over inflation, or like it may be in your case...they're off balance.

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Check the condition of your tires very closely because if they have uneven wear it can cause shakiness. If the wheel shakes only when you are stopping you might have some worn break components that need to be replaced.


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i have had shaking of the steering wheel about three times, twice in a 93 taurus and once in our 96 contour.. each time a new tire on the front wheel got rid of the shaking.......
tire shop guy tells me that it is almost always the tires that are the problem... went out to check the tires and sure enough there was a 2 -3 in cut in the tire,, the bands where coming apart.... sometimes the bands inside the tire start to pull and you cant see it on the outside but take the tire off the rim and you will see a bulge inside the tire...... i found that when the car would shimmy that i would change the direction of the steering wheel a little and the shimmy would go away(the reason is that the pulling of the tire was no longer pulling the tire apart-a broken or loose band in the tire....

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fly44 Offline OP
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Ok. Before i bring this in to the dealer again. I just want to get clarification.

Aside from the whine at low speed as mentioned before there are two other noises i am aware of in my front end.

At around 3.2k RPM in 1st 2nd and occasionally 3rd gear i will get a vibration noise coming from the front end, sounds like left side. This stops at 3.5k RPM.

I thought last night that i heard a whine coming from the front left. Could have just been tire noise though. I was doing around 40MPH.

I'll get the dealer to re-balance the tires and check everything relating to them (hopefully for free because they screwed it up).


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Yes for the wheel balance they should do it for free because they didnt chekc your tire pressure and adjsut it for you.

You should do it yourself correct PSI is 34.


Dont know about the noises though.


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