Vibration in steering wheel at highway speeds

[dlindzey]

Well I just got new tires and of course balanced and this made the vibration a little less, but could just be optimistic thinking. I am getting it aligned tomorrow to take that variable out of the equation, so my question is what would one do next if the problem remains.?
At low speeds nothing is noticable. When on highway around 65 a vibration is felt in the steering wheel, strong enough that it pisses me off and can't really be ignored. At 70mph the vibration goes away.

those of you with experience in these matters, what would be the sequence of next steps to try and resolve this issue?

Does that fact that it vibrates at a certain speed and then goes away at higher speed suggest a particular issue?

[Max Welton]

[dr914@autoatlanta.com]

agree wheel balance, wheel out of round or warped. Check also to make sure that there is no play in the steering, the wheel bearings are well lubricated and that there is no wheel bearing play

[dlindzey]

thanks for the response
it now has had new tires and balancing and alignment and the problem remains.
there is in fact some play in the steering as identified by the tech doing the alignment but he could not tell what component might be at fault. He said that there are various kits to install that might fix the issue.

so does any one know the next step, best kits etc to address the 'loose' steering linkage?

[Max Welton]

Without knowing the cause, any "kit" can be relied on only to extract money from your wallet.

So you either need to figure that out or find a better tech.

Have you crawled under the car and felt around for loose ball joints and such?

Max
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[raygreenwood]

Dr914 gave a good list/synopsis of things to check.

You are seeing a wobble at a narrow rpm band. By the way your wheels and brake calipers and rotors are identical to what's on my vw 412.

I am finding GOOD balance technique to be difficult to find over the past 10 years. It's not that the equipment is poor.....it's better than ever. It's not that the employees using the equipment are poorly trained.....per-se.

It's a bit of missing know-how for older/classic cars missing mixed with some missing knowledge about how sensitive old cars are to minor imbalance compared to new cars.

The know how issue. Most of the STOCK wheel on our cars had hubcaps. Hub caps are rarely balanced perfectly and on most machines you cannot balance the tire with the hubcap on. So, on a perfectly balanced wheel, adding the hubcap back on creates a very slight imbalance. It is usually too small for anyone to notice it.

However, if the wheel is NOT perfectly balanced....but is PASSABLE in the mind of the machine operator.....it can be considerably out when you put the hubcap back on.

The other issue is that these machines if well calibrated are pretty accurate. When the tire stops spinning and the operator is turning the wheel by hand until the pointers of where to put the weight line up.....they need to be dead on accurate of stopping the machine on 0 and putting the weight DEAD CENTER on the pointer mark.

If it's a big weight and they get a little sloppy in placement......larger diameter modern wheels with large offset for Front wheel drive....being with modern 4, 5 and 6 link suspension...can effectively damp minor imbalances.

In short, for a few decades now, the tire balance people have been getting away with minor sloppiness because modern suspension systems are less sensitive to minor imbalances.

The other big issue I see specific to our design of steel wheels with our range of offset....that was partially mentioned above. The size of the weight that gets used.

Back in the late 70s and through the 80s.....small, old school but excellent tire balance shops used to let me watch what they were doing. I learned a little. I watched the guy who worked on my 411 car all through high school (while I was learning to work on it myself)....balance my wheels.

First, if they were not new tires, he got down on his hands and knees with a flashlight while the tire was rotating, looking for up and down oscillation. If he saw that, he charged me an extra $3 because he was going to pull the tire off and check the rim for spread/flat spots and bending (more on this in a minute).

Next, when the machine told him where to put the weight and what size,.....if it was larger than 0.75 ounces.....he would get two half size weights and put in on the inside rim and one on the outside rim.
That will automatically cause the next spin to NOT perfectly balance....but instead would need a very small weight to be applied about 45° away. Or....optionally....he might try increasing the inner or outer weight that he split off by that small amount.

The gist is.....that putting large, long, fat weights on one side of the rim ....spreads that weight out across a handful of degrees. Not very accurate.....but also it can induce a diagonal wobble at certain speeds.

That very thing is what I repeatedly find in modern shops. I get my car back and in the parking lot I find one wheel with like a 1.25 Oz weight on the outside and nothing on the inside

I drive it around the block...fine. get up on the interstate....and I get a wobble...narrow band...in a 5 mph range.

I take it back and say "split that weight inside and out". I get this incredulous look and answer of "I can do that but it makes no difference" (it actually does)....and "OK if I do that it will still be a little off".....and I say yes....you will have to rebalanced and counteract that with a small weight 30°to 45° away.

They always say yeah but no one ever complains about this issue. I did not want to say that most people are to stupid to complain. Even my 2012 Golf with steel wheels has this issue....because.....the final weight added to it that throws it off....is when I slap the hubcaps back on.

Last thing. If you are on steel wheels (it's worse with after market steel wheels as they are thinner and softer)....and the car you have has sat on them for years unmoving in someone's back yard or garage anx/or it was on flat tires for years.....I 100% guarantee that at least one wheel or more has a "spread" to it. The only way to see this is with the tire off.

Ray