I have an EK hatch with a strange slight vibration in the front, I feel it in the steering wheel. At very low speeds, about 5 mph or it tugs the steering wheel back and forth slightly. The oscillation becomes progressively faster with speed. I had the wheels balanced and a fresh alignment. The car has been in no accidents. The oscillation decreased when I put firmer suspension on the front end. I replaced the rotors with brand new ones last weekend thinking that might be the culprit, but no luck. Any ideas what it could be?

 

Lower balljoint? I had bad lower balljoints and when doing 60 mph or more, the steering wheel would shake. Since then I have replaced them and it drives smoothly past 60 mph.

 

Is there anyway to visualy or physically check these? At low speeds would this be a cause the steering wheel jerking back and forth? Thanks

 

To check for play in ball-joints, you must jack the car up and have someone vigorously shake the tire left-right and up-down. While they are doing that, you crawl under the car & listen for any loose/clanking sounds. Once you hear somethings wrong, it only takes a second to track it down. I've found a loose sub-frame, bad tie-rod ball-joint, bad steering gearbox inner "rack-end" bushing, etc...

The other to check for is play in the wheel bearing. This will cause your tires to wobble no matter how well balanced they are. I don't know exactly how to do this, but I would guess you have to pull the wheel & rotor off, see if there is any play in the hub by yanking it around. Any movement of the hub relative to the knuckle is bad...

Do you have aftermarket rims? If so, you can look into getting hub-centric rings. These aluminum rings help to center the wheel properly. I found that over time, my rims seemed to get out of balance. The truth was they would become "off-center" after driving on them for a month or so. After I added hub-centric rings discount tire ($15 shipped), I NEVER had balance problems again...

Chances are, if you feel wobble at those very low speeds, it's not a hub-centric problem. I would definitely get the ball-joints & wheel bearings checked out...

 

will do thanks 94eg!

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by cbmprelude &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">will do thanks 94eg!</TD></TR></TABLE>

i'm having the a very similar issue. please update the thread when you find out what the culprit is.

thanks,

peter