I'm looking to finally solve my steering wheel shake issues, so some advice would be great.

Just before last winter I hit a lovely huge pothole. Immediately thereafter my wheel started shaking at highway speeds, mostly between 100 and 140 km/h. This was winter, I was in another city, so I had to drive maybe 1000 highway kms on the car like this.

When I have a chance to take it to a shop where near I actually live, they found that I had a bent wheel on the front right. I had it professionally repaired, the tire is remounted, and all 4 wheels were checked for balance, and they checked out. The wheels were all aligned for good measure.

The shake in the steering wheel was much reduced, but it is still there. At moderate highway speeds I can feel it, especially if I just "hold" the wheel with one finger. At that point it's possible to see the wheel shake, just barely. It persisted when I rotated my tires front to back (moving the fixed wheel off the front), as well as when I was running my winter steelies and tires. I'm pretty sure my wheels/tires are ok now.

It's summer now so I have the time and tools to futz with the car. What should I be looking at? Tie rods seem to be a good candidate from what I've heard, but I'm not very knowledgeable, and I can't for the life of me find where the Helms goes into detail about them (if it ever does). Which could be broken? The inner, the outer, or just the "tie rod ends?" Is it okay to replace just one side's setup?

Or should I be looking at something else? Unfortunately I have to look at not only things that could be broken by a huge pothole, but also things that could be broken by bent wheel vibrations over the course of a thousand k.

 

I wouldn't look at tie rods intil you completely out of other options. I just recently replaced both of my tie rods (outer) and boots and I have a little vibration @ 65-75 mph. This didn't start until I had to hammer a rusted rotor to get it off.

You'll need to look more at rotating stuff like bearings, tires, rotors. etc... Check for any play in your wheels when you jack the car up.

 

I'm sure my wheel/tire combo is fine. The original bent wheel was fixed, I've rotated tires anyway, and my winter wheels gave me the same trouble.

Although I get wheel shake while slowing down, I'm not so sure that my rotors would be causing vibrations while I'm on the gas and off the brake. I also havn't been hitting them with hammers lately ()

Wheel bearings I'm clueless about. Is checking for wheelplay when the car is jacked up the surest way of telling?


Edit: I guess it's worth noting the car is a '01 with a little over 50k miles on it. So the implied question is: can wheel bearings fail due to potholes or idiot owners driving the car on a bent wheel for awhile? Because I really doubt that they would be failing due to age. Or if they are I need to go drive a bus into Honda's HQ



Modified by A Blue Lude at 9:42 AM 5/25/2006

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by A Blue Lude &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I'm sure my wheel/tire combo is fine. The original bent wheel was fixed, I've rotated tires anyway, and my winter wheels gave me the same trouble.

Although I get wheel shake while slowing down, I'm not so sure that my rotors would be causing vibrations while I'm on the gas and off the brake. I also havn't been hitting them with hammers lately ()

Wheel bearings I'm clueless about. Is checking for wheelplay when the car is jacked up the surest way of telling?
</TD></TR></TABLE>

Yeah, lift up the front of the car and just try to shake the wheel around and you should be able to feel if there's any freeplay. If there is you can look at the tie rod ends and see if they have any play also. I just went and looked at mine and it moves a little bit from side to side...which really sucks. Probably a bearing....

Another thing that will cause vibration is axles, but that will be only when you accelerate.

 

it can be the driveshafts, if theres an onblance, you get also some vibrations!

 

i would say check the rotors and brake pads. I know when my shook i took off the front tires and checked the brakes and i had a cracked brake pad. Otherwise maybe ur allignment is off. But it could be ur tie rods as well. Its hard to say with out actually experiencing the shake in person. I would say take a peak at ur wheels, tires, brakes, rotors and **** and go from there.