weird vibration

[leman]

hi ya, got me self a 92 pontiac gp. And theres a vibration in the front end like a shimmy or shake, speed wobble or sumting to that effect. its from passenger side. put new ball joint on a few months back and problem is still there. i noticed theres some side to side play on the pasenger side tire. and it does not seem to be the tie rod end. it looks to be ok. so what else is there that could cause that side to side motion. I am not shure if the drivers side is like that or not. need some help on this.

 

Thanks

[mra32]

improperly balanced wheel?

[leman]

have had all 4 tires rebalnced, but that does not explain the side to side play in the front end...

[mra32]

the wheel hub could be going bad. if there is a little play in the wheel when its jacked up, thats usually and indication of the wheel bearing going bad. Try jacking it up and put your hands at 12:00 and 6:00 on the wheel and see if it has the same play. If so, you may have wheel bearing failure. But I dont know if that would cause speed wobble.

[leman]

i did that and had play in it, now since i changed wheel bearing that play is gone. i get the play when i put my hands and 9 and 3 and push and pull on the tire and i think its that play which is causing the vibration in the front. other than being a tie rod i dunno what else to look for.

[GutlessSupreme]

If it's just 9-3 I'd be looking at tierods or possibly even the rack. Our tierods aren't too bad to do. Getting the ends off seems like a bitch, I dunno, I've just been cutting the inners in half since I had to replace them anyway but with the right tool it's easy enough.

[leman]

thing is if its the ineer tie rods, there $56+tax canadian each at our part stores, but i can get a complete rack that is used for $100. the car is from the same year but only had 92000km on it so it should be good i think. is it a big job to change the rack and do ya need to lower the engine cradle to do it..

[Q-Ball]

Just do the inners and dont change the rack. I replaced both inners and outers. Inners were easy to do. You can rent the tools for free at Canadian Tire.

[leman]

is it possible to do the inners without the tool. As crappy tire wants to charge me damn near $200 for the tool.

[Q-Ball]

is it possible to do the inners without the tool. As crappy tire wants to charge me damn near $200 for the tool.

 

My service manual says you can use 2 wrenches, but I tried that it and was almost impossible. And you get all the money back when you return the tool. I just put it all on my credit card.

[GutlessSupreme]

You can get the tool on ebay for about $70 shipped, made by Lisle. It comes with adaptors for all different makes, if you typically do a lot of work on cars it's definetly good to have around. I know it makes this job wicked easy (at least compared to how much of a PITA it'd be without it.)

[leman]

i think its the drive shaft that's the problem i checked it yesterday and thers some play in the shaft. you can actually wiggle it back and forth. the drivers side is tight and i can not wiggle it back and forth. so that y i think its the drive shaft causing all the problems. anyone know what size of socket it takes to remove the nut for the axle and is it a 3\8 drive or a 1\2 drive ratchet

[GutlessSupreme]

axle nut is 35mm (36 will work if you can't find a 35)