2004 Maxima Elite with 225000 KM. The infamous steering wheel shimmy started back in December. I had a bad wheel bearing passenger front and also replaced both front rotors and pads. No shimmy prior to this.

Shimmy was present anywhere from about 80 km/h to 110 km/h. Summer riims / tires, winter rims / tires, rotated front to back, side to side..nothing helped, so this was definitely not an unbalanced tire situation.

My mechanic suggested "on car" balancing. This is where the rim and tire is balanced while mounted on the car. This balancing will account for any lack of balance in the drive train as well as the tire/rim (so it will account for unbalanced rotors, or half shafts etc.). This is different than 'road force' balancing where the tire is balanced off the car or regular non road force balancing, also done off the car.

Well, the shimmy is gone. I'm not saying the root cause of the shimmy is solved, but by balancing on car, it's accounted for whatever imbalance was causing the shimmy.

The tire tech said the left side front was out about an ounce. The bearing replaced was the right side, so I'm leaning toward the rotor (which I replaced prior to developing the shimmy) may be the cause, although I've never had an unbalanced rotor in any brake job I've ever done.

The only drawback is, when I rotate the tires (or switch to my winter rim / tires) the vibration will likely come back (and the left front summer rim/tire which was balanced on car, will now be unbalanced in it's new location).

What I'll probably do, is just replace the rotors and pads this fall when I put the winter rims/tires on and if the vibration is gone, I'll know it was rotor related. Then I can just have the one summer rim/tire that was an ounce out when balanced on car, balanced off the car.