Light steering wheel shake - 997?

[T2R31]

Chaps,

Had a drive of quite a nice C2S today - with a view to purchasing.

Plan to get it inspected - but one thing I'd never seen before was a light steering wheel shake/wobble?

Fine under braking, no judder etc....no real column vibration or sense of balance/tracking/tyre wear etc.

But, when letting go of the steering wheel it illustrated what I'd call a high frequency low amplitude oscillation...(well, the failed NVH engineer me would)...which stopped as soon as I applied any pressure to the wheel?

?

Any ideas?

[mollytherocker]

T2R31 said:

Chaps,

Had a drive of quite a nice C2S today - with a view to purchasing.

Plan to get it inspected - but one thing I'd never seen before was a light steering wheel shake/wobble?

Fine under braking, no judder etc....no real column vibration or sense of balance/tracking/tyre wear etc.

But, when letting go of the steering wheel it illustrated what I'd call a high frequency low amplitude oscillation...(well, the failed NVH engineer me would)...which stopped as soon as I applied any pressure to the wheel?

?

Any ideas?

Probably a front wheel slightly out of balance. Mileage/age?

MTR

[phib]

My money's on similar I suspect slightly buckled wheel had several on my 2's

Phib

[sneakybear]

Check for worn steering track rod arms.

Mine did the wobble at multiples of 32 mph (surprisingly consistent), nothing under braking and perfectly stable otherwise (I agree it can't have been perfect but I couldn't tell). This was a precursor to a power steering failure and the whole pump and rack were replaced.

Buckled or unbalanced wheel could cause vibration as well and infinitely easier to fix :-) The laser alignment thingy works well too btw.

Cheers,
sb

[cay]

I had a similar light vibration through the wheel on my Cayman. It persisted after new tyres and balancing.

Eventually I found a place with a Roadforce balancer ( Hunter GSP9700 ), they checked the balancing and found it was slightly out. The machine also recommended removing a tyre and rotating it so the high spot in the tyre matches the low spot in the wheel. The machine applies a load on the tyre to simulate real driving conditions when balancing which is supposed to be more accurate.

I'm still not 100% how it all works but the vibration is gone so I'm happy.

[anonymous-user]

Is the vibration present at all road speeds or just a specific cruising speed - usually in the 60-80 mph range? The former would point to something like a buckled wheel or a worn linkage in the suspension eg, trackrod ends, while the latter would simply point to a wheel out of balance.

[T2R31]

All road speeds and road surfaces.....

But, i'd say that it's more of a side-to-side movement than vibration.

Car is an 08 with 35k?

[anonymous-user]

Not a wheel balance in that case. Might be a problem with the PAS?