tire/steering wheel vibration at high speed
 

So I've been noticing this for awhile now and can't seem to find exactly what the cause may be.

There's no vibrations that I've noticed until right around 110 mph. I know it not the brakes cause when I first got the car the brakes were going bad and it didn't vibrate til I applied brakes (hence how o found out brakes were bad) I shortly after that took it to get the brakes replaced and rotors were resurfaced. Not too long after that I had no problems hitting 140 mph no shake or nothing so I'm confident the brakes were done correctly.

I'm honestly not sure when I noticed the shake start. I was thinking it might be due to a truck that almost pushed me off the road in the rain and spun me out, no noticeable damage was caused car went off into low cut grass, no curb or anything.(i won't go into detail since I've explained this before)
I since had thought it was the rear tire tread being low and unevenly worn but got new ones for the rear, same as what I had so they match the fronts. Shake calmed a bit but still persists at high speeds over 100+

I'm thinking possibly a slightly bent rim? Last I checked the weights were still on the rims. And I'm pretty positive the shake is from driver front tire.

I know its not the balance of the rear tires since they balance those where I get new tires.

I'm trying to figure out exactly my problem so I don't get yanked around for this that and the other.

For awhile I thought it was front alignment but my research is saying otherwise

From what I've found it could be -
Bent rim
Out of balance tire
Warped rotor
Doubtfully an alignment issue

I know I need new brakes again but o know this isn't due to the brakes since the problem was present before they were needed again.

I'm thinking possibly bent rim, or in balanced tire maybe?

What do you guys think it is?

I have something similar as you described.
For me i am quite sure my front passenger side wheel is slightly bent.
This has been since i bought the car and only plays up at higher speed.
I've replaced all my brake components before and that never made any difference.

What you can try yourself is jack 1 wheel of the floor at the time and make some kind of ridged stand that you can place on the floor next to the wheel with a wooden pin or something that you can set against the rim and then slowly turn the wheel and pay close attention of the distance increasing or decreasing.
This will clearly show if your wheel is bent, the ideal would be with a clock gauge so you can even measure the bent.

It's likely you bent a wheel (or two) in your near accident. To really check it, you'll need to locate a wheel specialist in your area (NOT a tire retailer). Ideally, the wheel should be dismounted so the tech can spin the wheel and use a dial indicator to observe the amound of distortion on both the outside and inside of the rim. The specialist should then be able to judge whether the wheel can be repaired safely, or if it's junk.

BTW- if you're feeling THAT much vibration through the steering wheel, it's likely the damage is significant, so don't put this off.

The vibration is pretty annoying but on a scale of 1-10 10 being uncontrollable and going to pull you across the road and die I'd say its like a 3-4

It's almost as bad as when your brakes are going and you brake at like 80. And maybe not even that bad honestly. But I will get it checked out pretty soon cause I'm thinking its a very slight bend, and honestly didn't know you could repair a bent rim no matter how insignificant the bend is.

The likely causes of the problem can both be verified by having the wheels rebalanced.

1. You dropped a wheel weight. Not always easy to tell, as it's rarely the same amount in the same place every time. An agricultural excursion can help remove them.

2. You bent a wheel. Always possible you hit something slightly harder than soft grass where you went off. Rocks, tree roots, etc are not always visible.

3. You got some dirt/grass in the wheel. I'm only saying it because i've had it happen in an off situation before. With enough sliding force, a tire will deflect allowing a gap between the rim and tire.. dirt gets shoved up in there as you scrape along sideways. When a few oz can throw your balance off, it's not at all impossible that a small sum of dirt in the wheel is the problem.

Again, all three of these can be detected and rectified by simply having your wheels rebalanced. You should never dismiss the obvious.

Needs more 140 runs to confirm. Have highway patrol verify there is indeed said wobble.

Yeah next week ill have them rebalanced and see what they say then. And as far as I can tell I doubt there being roots, but maybe some tough dirt and grass as the ditch on that part of the road is about 50+ yards before any trees. This was also caused by having near bald tires and a guy that pushed me across 2 lanes and almost in the ditch and I got around him but the back came out to fast to really get it back ( I was still a noob at this car at the time)


And Mr. Sparco

Police cars are only factory tuned, if you can do better than 180k they can't catch you, so they don't even try.
Lolol
Nah, but I was just using as an example since I have done that and it was really smooth and easy to control, etc.

I had a very similar vibration issue, but mine was between 60-65 mph then it'd smooth back out. Had also noticed a little sloppiness in the steering. Jacked her up to change the oil and found that I could wiggle the left front tire back and forth. Inner tie rod was shot. Replaced both sides (inner and outer) and got an alignment over the weekend and that took care of it. Car drives SO much better now. I didn't realize how bad it was until I got it fixed, since it had slowly progressively gotten worse over time. Drives like a brand new car now.

I usually check for stuff like that during my oil changes and I haven't seen anything wrong.

Bit also I've noticed its not a constant shake, its intermittent like if you had a wheel not bolted all the way down. Is that still a likely out of balance issue?

Could be a wheel bearing beginning to show wear intermittently.

But a bearing would be noisy, there's no out of the ordinary noises.

But literally it will shake for 1-2 seconds then smooth for 1-2 seconds then shake again and so on, and when it starts to come in its light and gets progressively worse then lightens back out to no shake.

The feeling is exactly as if the tire wasn't tight, which it is, I've made sure numerous times. And with unbalanced tires I didn't see anything that says its an intermittent shake like that.

^^You just exactly described the vibration I had, except mine was at 60-65 mph.

You think it could be the tie rod then? Even though I only feel it after 100, and its more noticeable once I let off the gas, you can't feel it that much when accelerating until you go past the 110-120 mark, but that's why I won't go that fast til I fix it anymore

It's be worth taking a look at the tie rod. Jack it up and grab the tire at 3 and 9 o clock and see if you can wiggle it any at all. When I did I could, and I could see that the whole tie rod was moving with it so the ball joint in the inner tie rod was the culprit.

Alright, well ill check that when the gf gets home from work today and ill post up the results of the test. In the meantime ill see if the Haynes manual has anything else to say about it.

Haynes manual says out of balance or out of round wheel/tire or tie rod end like you had.

I'm kinda doubting that its a bent rim cause I remember it still being fine after that incident, I didn't notice the problem til I had the problem with the rear tire and it turned out I had a nail in it and the people that patched it didn't tighten the wheel properly and it rode kinda shaky so I tightened it properly and a couple weeks later had new tires put on anyways and the shake still persisted so I'm thinking something happened in the meantime that caused a weight to fall off or the tie rod started going out.

So I won't be able to check today since its been raining all day and I don't have a garage or anything to park in at my apartment so will just have to try tomorrow if its not raining.

Take it to a shop that does road-force balancing. This will show if you have a bent rim or tire issue.

Yeah I'm doing that Friday or sometime this weekend, just trying to see what everyone else thinks so I don't waste money on something to find out its not the issue.