i know i saw this posted somewhere but i have a terrinle shimmy from around 40-80mph. its lower also but not as pronounced. it feels like a unbalanced tire. i thought it was but i then had all my tires rebalanced and they are perfect. nothing looks bent(tie rods) nothings loose and it doesnt sound or feel like a bearing issue. it also tracks strtaight so the alignment cant be that bad. if someone has some kind of remedy to fix this please let me know. its driving me nuts. thanks

 

The only other real problem I could think of that would be causing the shimmy would be uneven treadwear. Other than that, you have some sort of steering problem.

 

i wish that was it but the tires are new with maybe 9k on them.

 

might be your sturts.

 

I have this same thing, though I'm suspecting wheel bearings... taking it into a shop tomorrow to have them look at it.

Jack up the front end and rotate the wheels. Do you hear any scraping coming from the brakes at all? (I do, it happens lightly in a periodic fashion, keyed to the rotation of the wheel... I've checked the rotor runout and it's almost to Nissan's limit of 2.8 thousandths of an inch, and this has been tested with 2 different set of rotors, one old and one brand new)

 

yup had the wheels off today. no play at all and no scraping either. could it still be the bearing with no sound or looseness? when the bearing on my subaru went bad the car sounded like a helicopter. the max doesnt make a sound. let me know what happens with your car. thanks

 

actually once in a while i get really bad shimmy in the front end. like once in a while when i'm driving on the freeway mys teering wheel will shake like crazy. my TL does that too actually. at first i thought something was really wrong with my cars but it doesn't always happen and lately hasn't happened at all. i kinda learned to get over it. of course if you think it's serious don't hesitate to have it checked out

 

i do think heat maybe an issue. i mean the heat from the parts moving(bearings&tires). it does lighten up after driving for a while. still very apparent though.

 

like ighettoboyi said..I get the same thing around 65-70MPH range...anything more than 70..I dont feel a thing.And it happens only sometimes.

 

Could be warped rotors, at least thats currently my problem..

 

My "shimmy" actually came after I rotated my tires at around 30k miles and went away when I rotated em back at 35k.... that's why I'd guess in my case it was uneven tread wear since your bearings are fine...

 

i really hope its nothing other then having it be a big deal. im tired of going to the dealer ship. i just got the car back after having the tranny tsb's done on it. i need to get rotors but they arent that bad. well ill start going through the process of elimination then.

 

Alright, well I took it to my local mechanic and here's what he said...

One of my tires has some "hop" to it, as in, on the balancing machine, you notice a slight "high" spot on the tire. This tire happened to be on a bent rim this past summer, and this was on the rim with the worst bending... so maybe the tire wore funny when I was driving it around on the bent rim. He rotated it to the back and rebalanced all 4 wheels (only the rights needed balancing, the lefts were balanced last Aug. when I replaced the bent wheels, and the balancing was still perfect)
Since the hub has no play in it, they don't suspect wheel bearings. He said when the wheel bearings go, you'll know it... 'cause the damn thing will be loud all the time and it's really obnoxious. I can't say it's become that bad. I hear some road noise, but as this guy said, when those low-profile tires wear down, you're gonna get some extra road noise, and especially if you wear them funny by running the tire pressures too low (~32psi in my case)

So to sum it up, he thinks it's the tires.

 

Those are Michelin Pilot Sport A/S 235/45-17, BTW. I bought them last October and probably have at least 40K miles or more on them

 

I have warped rotrs...but how can that cause a shimmy at roughly 60-70mph and that too only sometimes...70+mph, it all smoothens out

 

Well, the vibration is definitely not gone, in fact if anything it's worst. I took it back and had the guy drive it, and he still thinks it's the tires... however he said it COULD be the wheel bearings just STARTING to go, problem is you can't really tell because it's not far enough along that you can pinpoint it.

However, he did clarify what he meant by the tires wearing funny--the outer edge of the tire has a "feathered edge", as in, the rubber has a lot of scratches in it, presumably from the lower pressures. Plus the tires have a distinct "dip" in the middle, but I think that's the Michelin compound (rubber is softer in the center) wearing differently.
Either way, he told me to drive it around for a few weeks and see how it changes. With the higher pressures, he said the tires might wear more evenly and the "feathering" could disappear, resulting in it getting better. But if it only gets worse, it could be the bearings.

 

Do a burnout..that should help

 

Hey amigo Spirilis...I also had the damnedest time balancing and truing my old Pilot A/S's when I first got them....it was after not once but several tries at a shop with a Hunter 9700 Road Force Analyzer that we got the tires smooth with no shimmy.....my new Turanzas were better and easier to balance in every way-maybe the softer sidewall has something to do with that versus the stiffer sidewall of the Pilot A/S's

In any event, my car shimmied until the tech was able to get the front tires to less than 6 lbs of 'road force'.....anything over that and the car shimmied a bit, even with 'zero-zero' balancing with the machine set at 1/8 of an ounce (in lieu of the standard 1/4 oz) tolerance. Please, PLEASE dont waste any more time or moolah with normal balancing....go do a Road Force analysis and please post what the Road Force figures were before and after the tires were rotated on the rims....

 

when i was driving last night i was thinking about this post and trying to see if my car still did it but everything was smooth all night long...i'm running falken stz-01 those low pro truck tires if that makes a diff (being falken not truck)

 

huh, the only other shop I know of around here with a Hunter doesn't really believe in using the Road Force feature... how do they "balance" it any differently with that machine anyhow?

 

Dang....looks like you have a shop that bought it but has'nt taken the time to learn how to use it, whatta shame.

The 'balancing' part of the Hunter 9700 is just another same-o-same-o balancer like any other balancing machine. Where this machine stands out is that is has a roller that applies 700 lbs of force on the wheel and tire assembly and the roller actually measure the force of any 'kick back' from the tire/wheel asembly that's caused by out-of round conditions, slipped belts, deformed tread or a mounting problem where the tire did not seat concentrically on the wheel itself

The machine shows that 'road force' in lbs as well as keeps track of the point on the tire's circumference where that 'kick back' is the greatest. If it's high -as I said, anything over 8 lbs of road force or 'kick back' is high- then the tech will use two rollers that measure rim/wheel out-of round, and once that's input into the machine, the machine will automatically determine how the tire needs to be moved on the rim -deflated, rotated on the rim and reflated- to match the high point of the tire with the low point of the rim, thereby reducing road force or 'kick back'. Once that's optimized, then the machine executes a normal balancing process like any other balancer out there.

The tech definitely needs to be able to use all those features to get things right....if your shop's tech is just using the normal balancing capability and not the road force analysis process, go to another shop...that guy just does not know what he's doing.

The shop that installed my Turanzas has one tire that road forced at 26 lbs, by matching the wheel rim and the tire they got it down to 7 lbs -that's near perfection. Bottom line, find another shop that knows how to use that machine the way it was designed to be used and not like this:

 

Wow, that's interesting. IMHO, I believe this is still a wheel bearing problem, especially with the noticeable "hum" that I'm starting to hear which has increased over the past month or 2 (while the tires, of course, have not changed...)
...along with the fact that I'm now noticing the distinct "roughness" or "vibration" in the steering wheel even at <20MPH speeds, albeit it's less of a "shimmy" and more of a "roughness" feeling in the steering wheel's movement.

 

Hey, I did not catch that in your post/thread....I agree.....those are indeed classic symptoms of bearings going kaput....

 

Figured. I was going to pop out the axle today and check how the spindle rolls with no load, but I gave up after figuring out that I was trying to remove the axle locknut with the wheel *removed*, rather than installed, resulting in me popping out some studs and possibly bending some slightly. Damnit.
I'm just gonna let it get worse...