Bad shake/shimmy above 60mph

[RustBucket]

Hey guys,

So a couple of weeks ago I went to get my tires rotated and balances just routinely. I looked at the truck up on the lift and noticed that the idler arm had some play in it (TRW from Advance). Before fixing it, I got on the highway and noticed that the steering wheel would start to shake back and forth violently above 60mph. Steering slightly to either side would almost immediately remove the shaking, but it would return when the steering wheel was straight again. No tendency to jerk to side, just horrible shaking.

I replaced the idler arm, checked that the steering box was tight (it is) but the problem remains. I figured the balance must have been done poorly so I went back to NTB and they rebalanced them, and told me that they only needed a very slight adjustment. The problem did not go away.

The alignment was done not long ago and NTB checked that too, it's all fine. The upper balljoints are newly replaced and I also repacked the front bearings a few months ago.

Any ideas about this? A friend of mine seems to think that the bearings may actually be the culprit, and that they may have been damaged before being repacked.

[RustBucket]

Oh yeah, this is a 1988 4Runner, 22re 5spd, running 33x10.5 BFGs

[04 Rocko Taco]

The problem is OBVIOUSLY the tires, and you should give them to me for free, and I will trade you my 31X10.5 for them. lol. Im sure that will fix it. :)

[Good Times]

I agree check yoru tires as I too suspect it's a balancing issue.

Good luck

[RustBucket]

Well... I just had the tires balanced twice by NTB, whom I trust. So my feeling is that it's not the tires.

[Good Times]

Since this issue appeared right after the tire rotation/balancing I still think that this is the cause of your issue(s). I would recommend that you go back and have them re-balance the tires or take it somewhere else to get them checked.

As an alternative, you can try to install some stock tires and see if the problem resolves itself. If so, then you know the problem is 100% the 33" tires you have.

Good luck

[04 Rocko Taco]

Well... I just had the tires balanced twice by NTB, whom I trust. So my feeling is that it's not the tires.


Rats, Tracy just needs bigger tires, and I figured if I could swipe them from you, so much the better. lol.

[RustBucket]

That's a good idea, Lance. I will have to try that soon. The thing is though, I had the tires rotated and balanced, and then had them rebalanced. So I think that they are balanced correctly...

What does one do if a tire is out of round or something? Can you take them to a place and have them shaved down a little bit?

[04 Rocko Taco]

Jordan, I am sure there are plenty of sets around the house, but if you need a set to try out on the rig, let me know, I've got those two sets of 31's, and could swing by one evening after work, and we could swap them out and drive yours around and see what it does. Let me know!

[RustBucket]

Thanks Chris, you're a real pal! I'll take you up on that next week. For now I'm just going to keep it at 60mph on the interstate.

[RustBucket]

So I went back to NTB and found their best tech and had him do my tires again. Ended up they just needed the expert touch and now they ride pretty well on the highway!

[Good Times]

awesome!

[04 Rocko Taco]

Hey, good deal, guess you dont want mine anymore. lol
You gotta see Tracy dude, you won't recognize her. I'll probably drive her to GP tomorrow.

[Cheese]

For redundancy here...

If the truck drove in to the shop fine and drove out with the same tires in different places with a different balance, the finger should point to one thing.

Always look at what was changed. There is no reason to think that after driving in fine and driving out with a problem that any thing is wrong except what was changed.

[RustBucket]

Hey Cheese,

My last post was just to close out the thread, but I'll give you some more details about what really happened:

The tires apparently had a bad wear pattern (most likely from the guy I bought them from slightly used) which was aggravated by the fact that the wheels actually came with the wrong lug nuts too. The tech put the tires on the balancing machine and watched how much they wobbled and the amount of weight the machine called for. But before adding new weights he unmounted the tires and rotated them with respect to the wheel and remounted them. He then checked them on the balancer again until he found the best wheel/tire combination and orientation. He spent over 2 hours doing this, and then when he discovered that I had the wrong lug nuts, he GAVE me a set of the correct kind that belonged to HIM.

The moral of this story is, when you find a tech like that who will take the extra time to do a job the best he possibly can, you stick with him. This guy has rotated and balanced tires for over 20 years and works at a Toyota dealership too. Kind of a hero really :)

So the tires still have a bad wear pattern and still vibrate very slightly at high speeds, but it is probably 10 times better. At 70mph they are stable and feel fine. It's possible that when I have some more time to fool with this stuff I will put these wheel & tires up for sale here and on YT for someone who will use them for offroad mainly or who is geared low enough that they don't drive over 70 very often!