Howdy folks,
2001 1.8, 143K, avant, tip. Shake, shimmey, vibration in chassis which begins at approximately 50mph. Confirmed chassis issue as it doesn't go away when placed in neutral at speed. Dealer said 3 of the 4 Nokians were out of round and that tires were 'definitely the problem'. Well, just dropped $600 on new Michelins and had them pro mounted, zeroed, and perfectly balanced. No change. Other things looked at:

motor mounts (fine)
wheel bearings (fairly new, tight, quiet)
axles (tight)
suspension arms (tight, quiet)
alignment (perfect---drives straight as an arrow)
struts (not leaking, not bouncing, seem perfect)

The mechanic is scratching his head. Any thoughts out there on something we're missing? This problem is driving me crazy,.

Thank you,
tom
shockts@yahoo.com

 

Aftermarket wheels? Hub centric rings maybe, just guessing

 

stock wheels w/ michelin exalto 205/60/15.

someone else suggested axle and cv boot replacement w/ similar problem. Mechanic says they look good but not sure how he can tell the axle is good.

forgot to mention, this is a quattro

 

Worn inner CV joints are known to cause vibration and stratight-line instability. I'd look into those.

 

thought the cv joints on these rigs were bullet proof---maybe the outers. I'm a hack DIY'er so I'm taking it back in tomorrow to have it looked again. I put about 150 miles on this weekend and the shake at 60mph is very annoying.

Thanks for the suggestions.

 

good timing with this post. i just recently noticed this same problem with my 2001 quattro. the shake/vibration is speed variant, and doesnt seem to make a difference whether you are turning or not. but with mine, it gets more aggressive when im decelerating at highway speeds. i was under the car the other day and noticed both my outer CV boots were torn and all the grease was gone from them. i havent been able to check it yet, but i believe that (at least in my case) the outer CV joints are bad. but ive been wrong before..

 

Took the rig back to the indy dealer and he said the new Exalto's were bad (3 of 4 were out of round). Hard to believe but I trusted him and had tirerack ship another set of michelins. This time I went w/ the primacy and lo and behold, the problem is solved. It was tires all the time. For the record, that's 2 bad sets of Nokians and 1 bad set of Michelins. Can't believe its that difficult to get a decent set of ROUND tires these days...

Oh well. Lesson learned and if others are having the shimmy and shakes at highway speeds, have your tires checked.

tom

 

You were looking for all the right things. The failure was probably in that the wheels were STATICALLY balanced instead of DYNAMICALLY balanced. The problem with the static balance is that it doesn't account for dynamic elasticity of the rubber mold (no tire is truly perfectly concentric with the wheel) so even if it's balanced at a standstill, which virtually any mechanic can do, it may vibrate at speed (dynamic balance test equipment is comparatively expensive).