OK heres the deal ..

It all started with my summer 18s and 235\40\18's .. Towards the end of the summer I was starting to get a weird vibration and shake in the steering wheel. At first I couldnt explain when it was happening, why it was happening, and I couldn't reproduce the problem. Naturally I thought maybe I threw a weight and my wheel was out of balance. Had them balanced .. fine. Problem still there.

Heres one of the weird parts .. when the car had been sitting and it was cold, I would start it up and drive it, and the wheel would shake BAD until either the engine or tires (not sure which) would warm up and then it would smooth out. The lower the temp outside, the more I noticed it. Like towards the end of the summer when we started seeing low 60s I would really notice it .. and those summer tires hated being cold .. they turned hard and I'm sure they were amplifying the problem.

I started asking around to friends to see what it could be, and a friend told me on his CL, which his mom previously had, she had a damaged belt in her stock michelins and it would shake when they were cold until the tires warmed up and then the air pressure would increase and the problem would subside. So I thought back to the day I hit the storm drain on the parkway at like 80MPH, and I attributed my problem to a damaged belt in the tire. Then during the fall I was getting a pretty bad pull to the left and I was losing air in my drivers side tires (same tires I hit) .. at first I thought I had bad alignment then I noticed I was losing pressure. So I said oh well when I switch to my winter setup all probs will be gone ..

WRONG .. brand new set of Yokohama Avid V4S on stock 17s .. pulling problem degraded quite a bit but I still have to SLIGHTLY hold my wheel to the right to go straight sometimes. and the weird vibration is still there, and still worse when the cars cold, but not as bad as on the 18s. Now I've noticed the steering wheel shakes when 1\2 to 3\4 on the gas in like 2nd through the midrange .. then will stop if I back down off the gas. Or when I'm just cruising and I push the gas down like 3\4 to get it to downshift I'll feel the wheel start shaking back and forth as its accelerating then I let off gas and it stops. When driving straight down a flat (or what appears to be flat) road at a constant speed (mostly slower speeds), it almost feels like I'm going over ripples in the road .. almost like a wheels bent .. even though I know thats not possible.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated guys .. its driving me NUTS ..

Bad motor mount? Bad alignment? Bent suspension component (even though I dont know how that would be possible)?

(sorry for the long post but I wanted to give a good description of the symptoms)

 

Blader, I have had similar issues, though not as bad as what you describe. When I had the original Michelins I would notice a temporary "imbalance" when it was cooler, and particularly on hard (3/4) accelleration. I wrote it off to bad tires and when I switched to the ES 100's the problem completely dissapeared.

I actually didn't think about it anymore till I switched to my winter wheels (16" Core Racing + Nokian ice radials) and even though I drove on these tires last winter and had no problems, this year I have the vibration big time. It is most noticable when I accelerate hard and I can't make any sense of that at all. I took the tires back to be re-balanced and they zeroed out totally - no imbalance! I persisted and spoke to the manager of the tire shop and he apologized profusely stating that I needed hub centric rings for those wheels, and that it was not a matter of balance. Essentially all hub centrics do is make certain that there is a perfect mate between the hub and the wheel, so thay are not on any kind of an eliptical rotation pattern. You can imagine if one wheel is going slightly up while the one is going slightly down it would a hell a mess dynamically speaking.

I can't explain the odd vibration on accelaration I have... but I am hoping the rings when i get them, (they are on special order) will fix the problem.

Hope you find the problem!


[QUOTE=blader]OK heres the deal ..

... and it would shake when they were cold until the tires warmed up and then the air pressure would increase and the problem would subside.

...When driving straight down a flat (or what appears to be flat) road at a constant speed (mostly slower speeds), it almost feels like I'm going over ripples in the road .. almost like a wheels bent .. even though I know thats not possible.

 

Quite common, I have noticed it lately with my Kumho's as it cools off.

The tires may be taking a set or "flat spotting" over night. Once the tire warms up it get's happy again. It will be more pronounced in a low sidewall tire as they are stiffer.

 

Even my Sumi HTR +'s have a little vibration on the first drive in the a.m.
Can always have somewhere inspect the suspension components, especially a place that does free evals.

 

What kind of tires did you have on your summer 18"s? It sounds like a flat spot problem to me.

 

Bad motor or tran mounts. Honda replaced all the mounts in my 2001 CL-S at 60k miles, and I no longer have the vibration. Apparently there is a high fail rate on the CL's. Best of luck! My