vibration and swaying
 

at 60-70 mph, my steering wheel vibrates. at lower speeds it's rock solid, and at higher speeds it smooths out a little, to where if i hold the wheel tightly i can't feel it. accelerating or braking make no difference to this. just had new struts installed and tires aligned, rotated, and balanced (yoko avs dbs with 9k on them). problem existed before i had work done and got a little better afterward.

also at 60 mph and up, in slight right turns on the highway, if i let my foot off the gas the car sways/swerves a little--never anything where i've lost control but to the point that it's pretty unnerving. doesn't do it in left hand turns. also the overall handling on the highway seems like it could be tightened up a bit--the wheel gets much more loose at speed. this problem was also happening before i had the struts/tire work done.

any ideas, inputs, or thoughts much appreciated!

thanks,
dan

Alignment - maybe try another place for a free or cheap check and see what they find. I think it disturbing that you still have pulling issues.

For wheel balancing issues you might try this site to find the best balancer in the US (Hunter 9700) - puts road pressure on the tread as it spins, so out of round, etc is disclosed.

http://128.242.141.111/pub/search/FindGSP9700.cfm

finally, are you confident that the struts, ball joints, tie rods, etc are OK and the work was done properly? Might check the steering rack to make sure it isn't coming loose.

That's about all I can think of.....

Thanks, lee. I'm not really confident the work was done properly or that the other suspension parts were checked fully when doing an alignment. The struts were installed very inexpensively and apparently quickly--the guy didn't pop back in any trim pieces well. He had also left several tools in the car. But, these problems were happening before I had any of this work done. The work fixed several other handling problems but only made these problems slightly less bad. I also just noticed some curb rash, not from me, on one rim--so maybe a rim is out of round?

Anyone else have similar problems?

dan

Yes, at least on the vibration part. I had the wheels balanced a couple times at two different shops without any improvement. The car was at the dealer for a warranty repair and I asked them to take a look at it. Verdict: bent rim. I went back to one of the first two shops to ask how they missed the problem (they had one of the Hunter road force balance machines). They apologized and re-mounted the tire on one of my spare rims for free.

Try swapping the wheels front to back and see if the vibration goes away.

Your vibration at high speeds while turning suggests to me that a ball joint needs to be replaced. If it happens in left turns, it's the right and vice versa.

A loose ball joint can also cause the other vibrations you describe.