Steering Wheel Wobble

Asking for someone to tell me what might be going on. I left the dealership for normal 10,000 mile service and the steering wheel now has a slight wobble at speeds between 50 and 60 mph. Its like a fast left to right type of slight wobble. It’s not really too bad. I asked them not to rotate the tires because they were just installed, balanced and alignment done at Discount Tire but I’m not sure if they actually did or not. It wasn’t in the garage very long. There was about 5 days and 300 miles with no issues from the time between Discount Tire and the dealership. I’m about to upgrade to COs, so I don’t want to have another alignment done until then unless this might be a bad problem that needs to be fixed ASAP. Any ideas?

 

Discount does alignments there? Check wheel lugs and make sure they’re torqued. Make sure a wheel weight didn’t get knocked off. They may have rotated and balanced and now you have a tires out of balance.

 

Sounds like a tire balance issue. Rotate your tires and see if it changes.

 

The tires seem like they’re smooth and don’t make any odd sound. It seems to only be the steering wheel

 

the alignment was done elsewhere on the same day as the new tires. They def had no time to rotate and balance. The truck was only back there for about 30 min and they did oil change, fluid fill, and visual inspections

 

I took a better look this morning. All lugs are tight. They did rotate my tires even though the service desk added a hand written note not to. One of my tires had some excessive weight on it that I noticed but Discount Tire told me that it balanced out just fine and if it gave me problems they will replace it. That tire was rotated to the front where the balance is more noticeable. I called Discount and they’re going to replace it on Monday.

 

I’m gonna start putting paint markers on my tires. You never know when shops rotate and not. I saw one dude at firestone take all 4 of mine off and put them in a pile and balanced all of them. Mixing them all up.

I notice I have a little wobble in steering wheel when I first get on the freeway getting up to speed in the morning. I think the air in the tires warm up and smoothes them out.

I’m leaning toward the idea of when I get the tires balanced/ rotated and ride is smooth never touching them unless I have to. I’ll give up 5k in tire life for having a life of smoother driving.

 

That’s how my wobble is too. It’s not always there. I have KO2s, so I don’t think I can get away with not rotating them. I’ve heard that tires with deeper thread will get cupped out and would eventually ride worse.

 

Dealership overinflate your tires?

 

I think one of the front tires is out of balance. It wasn’t noticeable when it was one the rear before the tire rotation. I have an appointment this morning to have that tire replaced

 

Hope you get it resolved.

 

I replaced one of the tires this morning, the one that had the excessive balancing weights. It still wobbles. I guess I’ll have to replace the other front tire too.
It’s just so strange that this happened immediately after the dealership did the 10,000 mile service. It doesn’t really seam like the tire isn’t balanced. The steering wheel literally does a fast jerking back and forth at a certain speed. Like it’s turning it’s self left and right very quickly. But I guess that is what it feels like when the front tires are out of balance? I don’t know.

 

I've experienced the steering wheel wobble on both a 2nd gen Tacoma and a 4Runner.
Tire balance is sensitive to it. KO2s are worst I ever had for being hard to balance. Force balance needs to be near perfect. Not just the lazy "close enough" a lot of places do. DiscountTire never has gotten these KO2s perfect for me. Just gets it tolerable.

Alignment also plays a role. Very slight tweak on toe angle can help. Has always helped mine. I recently reduced toe-in to very nearly zero on 4Runner and it did help but didnt totally cure. On my tacoma, reducing toe plus good force balance fixed wobble completly last time.

And rotate can help if over time wobble comes back. As fronts wear, I notice more wobble feel. Rotate fronts to back and it starts to feel better for a while. Your tires are new enough that this isnt issue for you yet.

 

I appreciate the post, thank you.
I think I’m going to leave it alone for now. I’m about to install some new coilovers and the alignment will be re-done again after that. If I’m still having the issue after that, then I’ll replace the other front tire.