In Feb 03,we got our 03 Maxima GLE,with 17" Turanzo tires.Almost since day 1, we have had a vibration/shimmy problem from primarily the front end.
The dealer re-balanced the wheels ( they were out of balance ),but that didn't seem to solve the problem,so I took the car to a tire shop that uses the hunter 6700 (?) balancer,to have them re-done.
The tire shop reported that the tire were out of balance ( ? ),the dealer said the same thing,but it seems to no avail.
At 65 mph the steering wheel shakes,and the hood vibrates,none of my VW's do this,and they cost only half as much !!!
We have 5000 miles on this car,and at present I wish I had bought another Passat or maybe a new Honda Accord.
The dealer,Agincourt Nissan ( Morningside Store ) has the car and we'll see what he says.I had thought of buying an Altima to replace a Jetta I have,but now I'm not very sure.
Anydody else have this "shimmy" problem,would going down to 16" tires help ( My wife is not a performance driver )or just a new set of tires ?
ANY HELP would be GREATLY appreciated.
Thanks.

 

I hear you. Maxima definetly doesn't drive like a 30K car should drive. So many rattles, vibration here and there. And when you go to dealer to fix problems, they blow you off. This just sucks.
I don't have the vibration problem that you describing, but I do have the sever fibration when braking. Brake rotors messed up I think.

Now back to your problem, I used to have 17" aftermaker wheels on my 95 Maxima and I had fibration all the time when driving above 60 or so. I took to Nissan many times, when I finaly went to this special shop that had the high speed balancer and they were able to fix the balance problem.
Now my dad has a 99 Maxima and he has similar problem as you too, and numerous trys to balance at the dealer didn't do anything. Dealer suggested that maybe tire is not round, not sure, but he is going to try this highspeed balacing at this special shop. Maybe it will help.

I know you mentioned that you went to the tire shop. Did they try balancing them with high speed balancer? Maybe you can give it a try.

 

I had this problem also and to some degree still have. I bought my car with 5 miles on it and the dealer said sometimtes there is a flat spot because of the pressure from being tied down during shipment. I had the dealership rebalance twice and although better it never fixed the problem. I gave up and paid Sam's Club to balance them. No more problem!

Recently I have started to feel some vibration at 65-70mph so I figured this is not a wheel balance problem but maybe an alignment problem. I think this because it only started after I hit a few potholes harder than I wanted. I will have the front end aligned and see if ti clears up.

 

Yes they did the high speed balance,not much different.I too had the brake rotor problems,they turned the rotors,instead of replacing them,but double the warranty on them.
Interestingly,we got our FIRST o3 Maxima in early Feb 03,the next day it died,and it wouldn't start.When we finally got it to the dealer,no help by the way fron roadside assisstance,even after waiting half an hour on the cell phone,they REPLACED the car,because they hadn't seen any of our problems before,and didn't knoe how to fix them.
Do the words Toyota and Honda have a comforting ring to them ???

 

Take it to a specialty shop. Dealers are a bunch of idiots.

 

I did that to-day...it didn't seem to make much difference.

 

famous4,

Go here- http://128.242.141.111/index.cfm

this is Hunter's web site and it will explain how the 9700 machines work. But you also need someone who really knows how to use it to get the benefit of it. I paid $18 per tire/wheel (yep, $72 total!) a couple a weeks ago to have mine balanced. I have Falken 512's I bought to upgrade from the Potenza's that came with the car. What they found after over 2 hours of troubleshooting and trying their best to remedy the situation was that I have excess road force pressures in 3 out of 4 tires on my car (which could be overlapping belts or poor construction as I understand it that creates hard spots in the tire that you feel when driving) One of them is fine, one is terrible and the other 2 have enough of a problem that I would feel it according to the 2 techs that worked on it. The work was done at a Sullivan Tire, not a Nissan dealer and the 2 guys were great as far as trying their best and explaining things. Right now I'm waiting to hear back from the Falken dealer if they can get me some new tires to replace the defective ones. Hope this helps, but it can be quite a project to get the tires/wheels balanced on these cars.

 

I've been having a simular problem,
I went to the dealer twice and they balenced the wheels and it still shakes
and its a new 2003 se
by the way, what tires do you have?
I have bridgestone potenza re92

 

I believe that we have 3yr/36,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty. So, if the dealer cannot resolve the imbalanced rims/tires, wouldn't they need to replace them? I know it may be covered under the "wear and tear", but worth a shot.

 

Could be a lot of things.

Have you tried rotating the tires to see if it changes? Perhaps one of the tires has a busted belt. Maybe one of the rims is out of round.

Personally, I think you have a bad tire. Only way to really tell is to rotate them out.

Shimmmy on a rear tire, you'll feel in your seat. Shimmy up front will be felt in the steering wheel.

 

Did they charge you for resufacing the rotors?
The guy at the dealer is telling me that my pads are worn out and I am telling him that my rotors are messed up. He is such an idot.
He is telling me that my pads are metal to metal. I know that you can hear this low pitched metal sound when pads are worn out that bad and I don't hear anything know.
I am going let them resurface them for me, and see if this will fix the problem. They agreed to do it under warranty after I argued with them for a good amount of time.

Good luck with your tires.

 

Last night,May 01, the dealer called and says he's going to put new tires on the car to hopefully cure the vibration.

I believe the dealer,Morningside Nissan in Toronto is trying hard to rectify the problem,and I appreciate it.

 

Congratulations, it sounds like you have a *decent* dealer. I've had my rotors turned twice and i have about 1000 miles to 36k. I almost hope they warp again so i can get new rotors/pads, but then again i probably just need to get some good reybestos pads.

 

I too,have had my rotors done,and I only have 5000 miles,no question asked !!

 

I thought I'd have my car back to-day.It's been a week.They were supposed to put new tires on to-day,but I guess it didn't help.

I hope this is not another non-fixable problem !!!!!

 

I just had my front rotors turned as well. They didn't give me new pads , they told me Nissan will only cover the rotors and not the pads. Anyways, I am thinking of getting new better pads anyways, are Raybestos supposed to be good replacement pads?

Thanks.

 

Ceramic Quiet Stops are good in a sense that people here have good experience of not having judder coming back every 5K. They're probably good in other aspects but as far as pads go that's the first thing I'd check about: how often people have to cut their rotors to cure infamous judder problem? If more than one owner complains - I'd stay away. I've read here that Ceramics don't fade in high speed braking, don't dust much. Don't know about noise level though.

 

I bet replacing the tires will fix your problem (unless you get more bad tires).

A few years ago I had a car that had a bad steering wheel vibration in it. The dealer balanced and rotated the tires several times and turned the rotors 3 times. I finally fixed the problem by replacing the tires! After putting the new tires on, no more vibration. At least 3 of the 4 tires were bad. I have a friend that had a different car, but same model year with the same tire model and he had the same problem as well. Must have been a very large batch of bad tires.

 

get the hood rattle fixed with the tsb thats floatin around somewhere