geesedude

I have a 2004 honda accord v6, only 50k miles on it. I don't drive it much and the car is in pretty good shape. Lately, after this past winter, i notice that there's steering wheel vibration when the car hits higher speeds, between 40-60 (doesn't vibrate at above 65 or below 40). But the funny thing is, after driving it for a while, say 15+ minutes, the vibration goes away on all speeds. I'm stumped.

I checked the tires and the tread is plenty. i've rotated them, and checked them for any possible causes on the tires and i don't see any, at least visually. The pressure is fine also. I haven't gone to balance the tires or align them, or have a mechanic check the car just yet, because i couldn't explain why the problem goes away after driving it for a while. I would tend to agree that this is worse in colder temperatures than on hotter ones. And i don't drive my car everyday - i would say in terms of frequency where i drive it more than 2 miles is about twice per week.

My best guess is perhaps that the air pressure in the tire(s) is low (and my gauge is falsely telling me otherwise), so the vibration occurs, but after the tires heat up a bit, the pressure is back to "normal" and the car no longer vibrates? I don't know if that even makes sense of low tire pressure causes vibration in the steering wheel at certain speeds. Or it could be that sitting around a while gets something sticky and only after driving it loosens it up? Not sure.

Any ideas would be very helpful... thanks.

BLKFLSH

Your tires may be getting flat spots from sitting long periods. Then the flat spots go away after driving a while. My 03 will do that after sitting in the driveway for a couple days. Don't know if over-inflating the tires would help or not. I didn't try it because the car rides too rough with tires over-inflated, and I can put up with the vibration for a couple miles.

geesedude

Hmm, interesting. But why now all of a sudden when not before? When tires reach a certain age/wear, do they tend to get more flat spots like this? And i thought flatspots form after not moving a few weeks, not just a few days.