Speed wobble

[tvrbloke]

Ok - got a handling issue on the S1 - extremly bad wobble at the steering wheel between 45 - 65 mph. It's that bad it's a job to hang on..

Just had the wheels balanced (thought that would cure it - they reckoned it was a little off but not that bad - took it back out - seems worse.

any ideas for possible cause?

(be gentle - i'm a numpty with the spanners)

on the same thread - steerings really heavy turning right, but light turning left - have i got a serious problem? (it's only just been MOT'd)

[ianm67]

Could be worth having your wheel alignment checked. You could do a quick visual check with the car on the drive.... Make sure that the steering is centered and from the front of the car see if either of the front wheels are 'toe in' (cross eyed) or toe out (boss eyed). You may find that the passenger side wheel toeing out, which would account for the greater ease turning left than right. This may also contribute to the vibration that you are experiencing at speed, that wheel is pointing left and is being 'forced' to travel straight on.
This could of course be a load of old tosh but it might worth a look....

Cheers,

IanM

[jed-s]

Have to ask - are your wheels round? Might be worth jacking up and spinning the wheels.

I had a V40 which I fitted new Conti tyres to and both the tyres were out of round by about 1cm. This caused wobble that got worse or better depending on how the 2 wheels were aligned.

Also had the rear wheels on another car with a similar degree of deformation and that caused the car to shake at legal limit speeds. They were budget tyres but even so I'd expect them to be circular.

[tvrbloke]

having read these replies - it could be the tyres - i know it's not out of alignment as it all sits square (to the eye) - but as for the tyres....

we've had the car for for about 7 years - only done about 4k miles in that time, but never changed the tyres - i suppose they could be "deformed" with the amount of "sitting around" the car does.

As for the steering - i was panicking about a dodgy steering rack or twisted chassis or something similar... guess i'm wrong then?

[GreenV8S]

Could be the tyres are distorted, but you'd like to think a tyre place would have spotted something like that. Another possibility is that one of the wheels isn't seating properly on the hub. If you get any dirty between the wheel and the disc, or the disc and the hub, this will show up as vibration.

Steering stiff in one direction points to a worn steering column, UJ or upper/lower ball joint. It's probably nothing serious, but it could *potentially* be an early sign of an impending catastrophic component failure so I'd treat it as a major problem until you know what it is.

[roy_s2]

I know this probably wont account for the left vs right turning issue but it might be worth also checking the bulkhead bearing for sideways movement of your steering column. I used to get horrendous wobble at motorway speeds before I changed mine.