Vibration at 68-72 mph

D

Denise Burchette

True Classic
I've got brand new tires and different wheels and I'm still fighting this damn vibration in the steering wheel. I had the car inspected on a lift and we couldn't see anything worn and everything felt tight. The X community may be mourning the death of a car if we can't figure this thing out!:mad2:
 
I have an obvious solution

Only drive 0-67 or 79-140. That will minimize your vibration. :thumbsup:

You can kick me at FFO Denise. :)

On a serious note, have you tried moving the back tires/wheels to the front and the fronts to the back? Just to see if anything changes. I know your tires are new, so it my not be a meaningful test.

Once I rotated my tires and got a similar shimmy. I swapped the wheels back and it was gone. That was due to uneven tire wear though, so I am really just grasping here.
 
I would say its either a rim with run out (or a bad tire....regardless that they are new) or it is a rim mounting problem onto the hub of the car.
 
Just random guesses

Are both your locating dowels installed on each hub?

Is it possible there's rust/dirt on the hub flat surface or on the center ring area keeping a wheel from totally installing flat against it? You might hit them with a little emory cloth.

Checked the steering rods toward the rack for play? (cracked bushing?)
 
If this problem is really bugging you.... it may be worth your while to take the rotors off and inspect the hubs for runout and remove the rust build up on the flange face. clean the rotor hat and check it.... and lastly.... make sure that the wheel desighn is mating up with the spacer plates.... and that the alighnment dowels are alighning the rim. not botoming out somewhere on the inside of the rim and causeing the rim to slightly cock on the hub when you bolt it on. Using the spacer plate by itself off the car and place it inside the rim to see how things mate up can be usefull. I have run into many problems where th ealighnment dowels or rotor flange bolts hit rim somewhere in an unwanted way causeing the wheel to not mount correctly. and.... thats why I don't have any on my car. Once the wheel is bolted on it doesnt matter that they arent there.....
 
Wheels hub-centric?

Wheels out of round? I had a repaired wheel once on the X that never really ran completely vibration free.

Tire has a flat spot or out round, out of balanced?

As mentioned, do the wheel/tire swap from another one of your FIATs to see if the problem goes away or changes.

Bernice

Denise Burchette said:
I've got brand new tires and different wheels and I'm still fighting this damn vibration in the steering wheel. I had the car inspected on a lift and we couldn't see anything worn and everything felt tight. The X community may be mourning the death of a car if we can't figure this thing out!:mad2:
Click to expand...
 
at risk of sounding dumb

hi
I have a similar problem..
Could someone please explain what the term hub cen tric means vs the other option please
Many thanks
Nick
 
Last edited:
Hub centric,,,

A proper rim will fit quite snugly on the hub and not allow the rim to move away from the center of the hub. This takes the load off of the bolts , and makes more certain that it is perfectly centered. This is more important if one is using wobble bolts. If a rims center is too big for the hub then one can have centering rings to take up the gap, and make it hub centric (centered). I think the X hubs are 58 mm, but not sure. Some drive without the centering rings but others do not feel secure in doing this, fearing loosening of the wheel nuts/bolts, and or wobbling.
 
Hi Denise,
I really don't know much about X1/9 mechanicals yet but you may want to look up Matt Brannon's aftermarket performance upgrade steering rack bushing, if those other suggestions don't apply to your problem.
 
Not just "me too"... but all of us...

have experienced this problem at one time or another.

I have NEVER had or heard of a car with such a sensitive issue like this.

One time I took my car back to a tire shop after I had removed the tires and reinstalled... saying I must've knocked off a weight and would they re-balance the tires. The tires ran true and were NOT out of balance... they reinstalled them, and re-torqued them using a torque wrench... and the problem went away... WENT AWAY!

I'm currently experiencing the same problem again... and they would shimmy EXACTLY at 59 mph and stop shimmy-ing at 61. I did all the usual stuff again (checking the torque, run-out, wobble, and then the toe-in. This time I adjusted the toe-in as it was toed-out a bit and I MOVED the wobble up to about 65 to start now. I'm gonna look further into this... as this is leading me in an en-TIRE-ly (ha!) new direction.

BTW... I had NO shimmy at all, at any speed under 100... before I changed out my springs and struts! I must've done SOMETHING...

Good luck Denise... and whatever ya do, don't ditch the car, you'll regret it forever! Let us know what ya find also!
 
It's the plastic bushing at the end of your steering rack

Matt has a steel replacement, the original plastic piece can be had for a few bucks off eBay, especially eBay Italy.

MR2 has the same thing, same symptoms.
 
avusblue98 said:
Matt has a steel replacement, the original plastic piece can be had for a few bucks off eBay, especially eBay Italy.

MR2 has the same thing, same symptoms.
Click to expand...

I can't find it on the Midwest site. He must be out of them. Seriously, I'll try ANYTHING at this point!

John O.
 
Mmm, saw it there just the other day, but not now!

Sorry about that, but I will bet that this is your problem. Experienced it too many times with the MR2 - the vibration sets up right at highway cruising speed, oddly enough, and seems basically fine everywhere else.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top