whenever i travel at about around 70-80 mph on the highway my steering wheel begins to shake a bit, especially as i accelerate fast to those speeds. it's not horrible ( i know what it feels like to have unbalanced tires because i had that with a rental car once) but it is noticeable and a bit annoying. i have custom 17" wheels and tires on my tc and i have had them balanced 3 times by different places and i bought hub centric rings to fill in the small gaps that used to exist. the shaking used to be a lot worse to the point that it was unignorable before i got the hub centric rings. after the rings were put on it reduced a lot but i still get a bit of shaking at the speeds i said above. it could be the road because i mainly travel the same highway everyday, but i don't know.

could this be an allignment problem? should i take it to the dealer to get the allignment checked, or are they going to give me a hard time about having custom wheels and tires and blame it on them? also, do you have to pay to get the allignment checked or is it under warantee or something?

 

Ummmm to me that sounds like tires...if it was the alignment wouldnt it pull to one side or the other? i could be wrong..but usually the shaking is from in improperly balanced tire.

Correct me if i am wrong.

 

it's probably ur custom wheels and they would probably blame it on them also if u brought it to the dealer. read some of the posts about manufactor warranty and how to void it.

 

That sounds right to me. Every time I've had shaking like that it was because of an improperly balanced wheel.

If it was during braking, it would probably be a warped rotor but since it's just during acceleration that can't be it.

 

oh yeah, i forgot to mention that the tires were looked at also by the 3 different places and i was told nothing is wrong with them. and i was told that the wheels are ok and not bent or something like that. that's why i have no clue why i get the shaking.

anyone else get any kind of shaking at speeds like that on roads?

 

do you live in a place where you drive over many potholes? its possible that you blew one of the control arm bushings. That was the problem on my 93 Altima, There are 3 bushing that hold everything together, and if they all break, your whole axel breaks free and well.... im sure you can figure out the rest.

 

Are you using the oem lugs? or aftermarket lugs with those rims?

 

I'm a tire-professional (sad huh?) Anyhow Scooby nailed it...tire ballance, probably threw a tape-weight. Any tire shop can fix it. Sears is a 14.99 ea for 17's+ but its lifetime balancing.

If you need to save cash, just have the fronts balanced..because feeling it in the steering wheel indicates fronts (your butt shaking indicates rears).

Then again, visually check out the tires too...might have a bubble forming.

 

i have the same problem around these speeds.

Have you checked/monitored your tire pressure? if it is too low or high it will tend to throw the wheel out of balance a bit.....

If that doesn't help, hmmmm I get the shakes too around the same speed...

 

i get shakes when i do speed to...o wait HA! just kiddin...no shakes here at any speed.

 

I'm an auto technition and yes it is the tires, they need to be balanced.

 

What tires do you have? You know I have problem with my tires. Car shakes at speeds 80-90+. What tires do you have?
By the way you can get a free alighnment at toyota . It is under war. , but only one is.

 

the alignment is only under warrenty for 12,000 miles. It doesn't matter the tire brand. Tires will just become out of balance for multible reasons pot holes, bumps, etc.

 

You need to go to a shop that has a hunter road force wheel balancer. The shop has to have a GSP9600 Road Force Measurement System. Go to www.hunter.com and go to products and then wheel balancers. There is a link to solve wheel vibration problems: locate a GSP9700. This will solve your problems. All other solutions will not work.

 

This is a wheel balance problem, unless the rim was bent. All you need to do is get your tires rebalanced.

 

This can more that just a wheel balance problem, could be bad bearings, flat spots on tires, off axis rims, etc. Just because you cannot see a bent rim doesn't mean the rim is not defective. The road force machine will take all the guess work out of this issue.

 

my tires are Federal Super Steel. that's what it says on the sidewall. i've never heard of Federal tires. but when i bought my wheels, i was asked what quality of tire i wanted: not so high, medium, or high. i chose medium quality, so they set me up with these tires. i should have posed what kind of tires i have earlier because maybe someone knows something about them, like if they really aren't so good or something.

as far as the tire pressure thing goes, that's an interesting suggestion. i had these wheels and tires on another car for about 6 months before i got the tc. while they were on the other car, one day, last summer, i noticed that one of the tires was very flat looking. i thought i had a slow leak so i took it in but they said that they couldn't find anything wrong with it. they water tested it in the tank for holes and nothing was found. air was put in and it was ok for the rest of the time it was on that car. it was the tire that was on the left front side, and i don't remember any steering wheel shaking. maybe there really is a problem, or one developed.

 

What lugs are you using on these aftermarket wheels? Your oem lugs or are they aftermarket lugs.

 

i'm using the aftermarket lugs. i think i remember reading once that it's not good to use lugs from stock wheels on custom wheels. but anyway, i'm not

 

okay, that clears that up, if the rim isnt bent i would guess that the balancing is bad, or that the tire pressure isnt correct. take it to discount tire, they will probably look at it for free. they usualy are good about that kind of stuff.