Bon

I've long been trying to get rid of shaking in my front end that happens around 55-70 mph. I chronicled many of my trials here. Recently I got new tires that got rid of all the shaking completely. I put about 750 miles on the new tires in both city and highway driving and the shakes are completely gone. End of story - almost. When driving at highway speeds the car exhibited some new issues. It was way too sensitive to steering inputs and it followed every crease, paint stripe and deviation in the road surface. I had to maintain complete concentration on driving to not let it drift. In addition I could feel every bump coming through the steering wheel. When the car was pushed through a curve it would not settle down but rather it felt loose and there was plenty of chassis flex to go along with this. Since everything was new in the front end including the steering rack (the old one leaked), tie rods and polyurethane bushings, I was at a loss as to what was wrong. After returning from our highway trip I measured the tread depth and was shocked to see huge wear on the front tires. The tread wear said that I would be lucky to get 6,000 miles out of the front tires!!

I took the car back to the shop that did the alignment and we began again to look for a problem. I got a call and they said that the front crossmember was loose. I ran over to the shop to see the problem for myself. They showed me the bolts that were loose. They were the bolts that attach #51201 in the picture to the body. They said that they normally don't check these bolts when doing an alignment so they missed it previously.



Well, they tightened up everything and did another alignment. They said that as the crossmember moves the alignment would move from toe-in to toe-out and the front to rear alignment wanders as well. Not a pretty picture.

Since getting the car back this afternoon I've been driving around like a teenager. The car tracks straight and true. No wandering. No hunting. No road kickback in the steering wheel.

As I'm not the original owner of this car I don't know if the crossmember was previously loosened or removed for maintenance such as motor mounts. I have to believe that it was loose when I got the car as I've never felt this car feel as solid as it does now.

Nothing left to say except and I hope this helps someone tame their steering and tighten up their chassis.

talwang

iTrader: (4)

Thanks for the info.
You are really determined to figure out the source of the steering vibration issue.