Steering wheel Shake

Mine has a pulsing shimmy shake, not real strong. I ass-u-me its the rotors. 30k. It's not enough to really bother me. I guess I should have the rotors turned when I have to replace the pads but from reading post here sounds like that might not be til 70k. I always thought this only happened if you over heated the rotors but I don't recall a lot of panic stops.

 

if you have spacers it does cause shaking

 

Ok, this is a sticky, but i havent really found the cause of the problem yet. Is it the TSB? is it the balancing of the tires? What?

Mine just started doing this recently. From about 45 - 65 or so. Im out of the 36k warranty, but my dealer would probably perform the tsb for me.

 

brand new hankooks. less than 3k on them

 

how you know if they are warped the rotors??? mine has a couple line pits is that bad???

 

Finally fixed mine this morning (crossing fingers). My steering wheel used to shake at highway speeds like the tires were out of balance. I tried having them road force balanced several times and put on extended thread lug nuts. These things seemed to help at the time until recently the tires were rotated and I was back to square one. I had heard of hub centering rings and decided to give them a try. I measured my hub diameter and the inside diameter of the eagle alloy center caps. Found some rings in the right size on Justforwheels.com. Installed them this morning and the ride to work was great. First time at highway speeds since I got the tires that the steering didn't shake, not even a little. If you've got aftermarket wheels I'd highly recommend getting a set of hub centric rings. Every time the wheels were taken off before, it was just a matter of chance if they got centered on the hub when remounted.

 

I had mine done yesterday at the place that works on my Porsche. It turned out that the tires had changed their balance a little bit with use, but not enough to cause a shake on their own. The culprit turned out to be mud. Most of the time, mud gets distributed fairly evenly around the inside of the wheel by centrifugal force, but when the wheels get rotated on the truck, the grease monkey can drop them hard enough to knock stuff off. The rear wheels obviously will get more crap on them than the fronts... that seems to have been the issue. What's remarkable is that there wasn't that much mud visible on the wheels. And a lot of what there was was stuck to spokes rather than to the rim.

The dirt around here has a lot of clay in it, so it's sticky.

FWIW. All I can tell you is, I ran the truck up to 140 kph yesterday on the way home, and it was rock solid.

 

cherry man

 

I just went through the same issue with a new set of Hankook P265/75/16's. They almost had it right but then they road force balanced the front two and it was worse. Took it back and they used a brand new laser balancer they had gotten last week and just got it up and running and learned how to use it. They did all 4 tires with it and they are now 99% perfect. I still have just a slight, very slight high speed vibration at 75-80 but I can live with this. The visible wheel shaking back and forth at 55-75 is now all gone. I have thought about adding Dynabeads to help finish smoothing it out, with weights in place, they guy told me 3 oz. per tire would keep it perfect over the life of the tire. I would like it to be as smooth as possible and the beads might just make it that way.

I had some bad new Definity Dakota same size tires and they gave me 4 months of un-balanced driving. You can balance that egg but it ain't gonna ride too good.

 

I did too. I have 285/70r/17 Maxxis Mudders mounted on pro comp 7089 wheels. I had a bad shake so I called the shop about it after I left and they said they might of knocked a weight off during the mounting. I set up to have it rebalanced on my next day off. I got lucky it shook for the first ten miles @35-45 mph then it got less and less then went away at 100 miles. I have gone to 80mph and no shake at all.

 

a good indicator for warped rotors is a shimmy in the steering wheel,or pulsating in the pedal. Mostly at hwy speeds,although really bad warped can even happen at lower speeds. Usually a shimmy braking is gonna be rotors. You could also use a micrometer and go all the around the rotor till you find it but you would need to know what your looking for.

I wrote service for Honda 5 years and vw 3 and current I have seen alot of warped rotors. I would reccomend resurfacing or "turning" the rotor before replacing,unless you come down alot of mtns then its kinda waste of money.

Hard braking isnt the onlu cause either,riding with your foot slightly on the brake pedal when coming down large hills is the biggest culprit. Long term heat build up then braking whil hot is the worst on rotors. Use you tranny... hope this helps

 

Badfish, sounds like U no your sh-t. What do you do down a long hill ? If I down shift it revs higher then I like. Could the real problem be inferior rotors. In prehistoric times we used to turn rotors all the time with no problem now you might as well just buy a new one because generally they are too thin to turn safely. BTW I never ride with one foot on the brake and rarely brake hard - emergency situations only. Will it do any harm to run with the pulse until it is time to change the pads ? Thanks. Curious George

 

mine does it since i put the bigger tires, the suspension shop said it was the additional weight of the new tires that cause the vibration. mine isn't that bad i have bfg at's 33's, tread pattern might make it worse or better

 

my girlfriends jeep wrangler, 4" lift with 33's had this same problem.... i thought it was the steering dampner, which we don't have on tacoma's but i took it to my buddys who have a 4x4 shop expecting them to change the shocks, bushings, steering dampner, etc.... all they did was rotate the tires and the thing runs like a charm..... i could only drive about 500 yds and the jeep would start shaking violently... i would almost have to stop to get it to stop.... now i can smash through all 6 gears and have 0 problems.... i'm not sure if this will help the tacoma situation but it worked on the jeep.... might wanna give it a try before going to another shop and spending more money on a "balance job" again and the outcome is the same....

 

tag

 

Road force balancing is the only way to go on most oversized truck tires a standard machine will not cut it unless youre running michelins. I'm talking from experience I've balanced a lot of tires when I was tech for toyota

 

Just rigged my own centering rings with a roll of p-touch tape. All that the centering rings ensure is that the rim is evenly spaced. A good indicator that your wheels aren't centered is when you jack up your truck and spin the wheel and the tire has an up and down wobble (an oblong or egg like spin). Even a small wobble will translate to a large steering wheel shimmy.

 

I know I am new and late to this forum, but I worked for a tire shop in AZ while stationed in the Marines in Yuma. The problem with after market rims, especially 6 lug rims is the center bore. These aftermarket wheel companies bore them larger so they can fit on different vehicles. So when you hang a rim on the hub of the vehicle, there is a little play in the center. The center bore on the new Tacoma is 106mm. My Dick Cepek rims are bored to 107.95 or 108mm. This doesn't seem like much, but when you hang Light truck tires (6-10 ply) All that weight at 60-70 mph can shake the vehicle pretty bad. Now multiply that by 4 tires and you have a pretty shaky situation. Now you can buy a product called hub centric rings to fill the gap between the rim and hub allowing the rim to sit centered on the hub. Additionally, if you have the heavier tires (6 to 10 ply), I highly recommend you have the road force variation balance done on these tires. Essentially the heaviest part of the tire is off-set from the heaviest part of the rim to counter the centrifugal pull caused by the "out of round" tire and rim runout. It will cost you more, but you will be satisfied with the results in the end. Just call around to tire shops and ask if they have a balancing machine that measures rim runout and road force variation. They should know what you are talking about. (I believe its a Hunter 9700 balancer). One additional trick with these Tacomas, is to use the ET style (extended thread) lug nuts. You can get a set for our trucks between 25-50 dollars. Not only will these lugs help to center the rim on the hub, they will give you extra bite on the short lug nuts installed by Toyota. Now with that all said, If you are not an agressive off-roader, I would suggest sticking to a P-metric, Passenger, 4 ply. You can get these in bigger sizes now. They weigh considerably less than the Mud Bogger style tires and look just as great. I personally like the Nitto Terra Grapplers. Great looks, great performance, and great price. The lighter tire is easier to balance and to drive on the highway. They are less noisy and last longer too. Additionally, they cost considerably less than the Bogger style tires. If you are a weekend warrior like myself, you can steer clear of the Load range C,D, and E's. Tacomas have a tolerance for the bearings and hubs. More than 12 pounds of road force variation will cause your equipment to deteriorate and fail. These are light duty trucks. If you want a rock crawler or mud bogger, spend the money and build one. If you want a light truck for pulling a boat, camping, or hauling the family around, avoid the extreme mods to your suspension and tires. Good luck fixing the vibrations and happy wheeling out there!!