I picked up a 91 sedan a while ago for a winter beater. the front end started shaking more and more, like the front brakes were bad. The steering wheel moves quite a bit while driving. I know the steering rack is pretty bad, but there was never shaking like this, it came on pretty quickly aswell. I just replaced calipers, pads and rotors and my brakes are worlds better but the shaking is unchanged. It has newish axles and a uca's. The only thing out of the ordinary is the set screws weren't on the rotors, but as far as I know the rotors will still center.... Its like a wheel unbalanced itself gradually. Any help=good!

 

You can do without the rotor retaining screws. They are there just for convenience. If the shaking isn't limited to when you apply the brakes I would highly suspect an imbalanced wheel or ice accumulation in one or more wheels.

 

check for tire bald spots
bad axles will definitely cause shaking........

 

The tires look good visually, there is no ice on them (I know this phenomenon all too well) and the axles basically look new, and when I did the brakes they didn't click or anything under full turn. I was thinking this over and is there any way that a tire/wheel could go out of balance really quickly? Also, sometimes it is almost non-existent (like yesterday) and then today it was the worst its been.... again, no ice or anything involved. Thanks for the input guys, keep the ideas coming!

 

I'd have them balanced. They'll be able to tell when its spinning if there is anything else going on like a bad tire or bent wheel.

 

yeah, I'll try that. seems weird that it would be a non-constant issue with wheel balance though....?

 

wheel bearings could be an issue too. happened in my crx.

 

Def get the tires balanced to rule out a tire problem and check for a bent wheel.

What speeds does the shake occur? Does it only occur when you're on the throttle?

 

the wheel bearings are minty as far as I can tell. It happens all the time, the faster you go the less noticeable, but only because of the frequency of rotation. It happens on or off the throttle, but a tiny bit more noticeable accelerating. The previous owner said he never changed the inner tie rods, so I'm going for the wiggle test as I leave for work....but as I said it FEELS like a rotation thing, but I don't know very much LOL

 

Yep, it was the right fornt tire. The bead moved. they put it on the balancer and it was all over the place. I also saw first hand how bad my tie rods are, I knew they were bad but they look pretty nasty. how stupid is it to drive on them? they proabably have about 1to2mm of play on the passenger side, less on drivers....