Steering Wheel Vibration

Canadian-KJ · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 7:15 am

Hi everyone, I've been "lurking" around here for a couple of months now and decided to finally join the forums. And my first post is a recent problem that hopefully some experienced owners can help me with.

This past Thursday I was out playing around in the snow in my neighbourhood and was turning right onto my street and managed to put myself into a sideways skid and hit the curb and bounced up over it into the snow bank. Now when ever I go above 35-40kph my steering wheel shakes. I inspected the rims (factory steels) there is a small dent in the front driver side where I hit the curb, as well as the rear. I've checked the tires for a broken belt and there's no indication of a bad tire.

I've done quite a bit of searching online and have gotten quite a bit of possible solutions, bent rim,tires out of balance,knocked it out of alignment, knocked a wheel weight off.

I've checked all 4 wheels and the weights are all still in tack,knocked all the ice and snow out of the rims, and looked under the front end and from what I can see everything "looks" right. Everything is symetrical on both sides.

I have an appoinment at the dealership this coming Thursday. I didn't say I hit anything, just that I have steering wheel vibration. This is probably coming out of my pocket, but I'm praying to the warranty gods.

Could a hard enough hit knock your alignment out bad enough that your steering wheel would vibrate??

Slitch · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 7:46 am

Hi and welcome to LOST
well my guess is that the rims are the reason for the vibrations the control arms arnt that easy to bend and if it happened u'll probably notice something different when steering and such
the factory steels would bend pretty easy im currently suffering the same problem but my rim is probably not fixable and is causing my rear wheel to wobble badly :furious:

anyways back to ur problem if you know how u could pound the rims back ur self if the bend is visible enough then balance it again, if not then either get 2 new (used) ones from a salvage yard or something shouldn’t be hard to find some

Slitch · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 7:49 am

sorry forgot the or part
i ment to tell you that you could just get some new wheels like the famous Cragar soft 8s or somthing which could be as cheap as 40 bucks per rim on Summitracing but then again its your :2cents:

Canadian-KJ · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 8:16 am

Thanks for the response. As you mentioned, I have no issues turning or anything. Other than the steering wheel vibration, there's no change in the vehicle (noises,or grinding,creaking). Just the wheel shuddering back and forth.

So would it be safe to say at the very least the wheels will need balancing again? And if a rim is bent hopefully it's just one because I'll just swap the spare out and use it for now.

Slitch · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 8:25 am

Please wait for more experienced members to post their opinions as well but from what i know i think that it will cost you only to fix the rim and balance it
hope im right

Canadian-KJ · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 1:20 pm

Thats what I'm leaning towards myself as well, a bent rim or balance issue. I just hope I didn't bend an axle or something. But I'm guessing other noticable things such as CVJ's and BJ's would break first, before bending an axle.

long_tall_texan · **Posted:** Sun Jan 16, 2011 1:59 pm

I would lean mostly towards a bent wheel, possibly two. It would probably be less expensive to take it to a local tire shop and just have them re-balance your wheels rather than the dealer. The tire shop will be able to easily tell if a wheel is bent also when they put it on the balancing machine. Typically, a bad alignment will not make the steering shake like that.

However, after you get the wheels re-balanced, or replace the bent ones, I am sure you probably need an alignment too. pretty much any time you hit a curb, in any car or Jeep, you will bump it out of alignment. Have it re-aligned to save premature wear on your tires.

If a rim is bent, make sure you replace it, and don't jsut try to have them balance it enough to get rid of the vibration. It will ruin your tire if it's bent.

Lastly, it is much less likely that you bent an axle or hub, but it is possible if you hit the curb really hard.

Steering Wheel Vibration

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