Former VWDieselParts.com Forum

Just started doing this. The steering wheel will shake on the interstate almost like it's having a seizure. Is this something a front end alignment could fix? Or is it just cuz it's an old car? Any suggestions appreciated thanks.

Typically a sudden change means there's something that happened that isn't quite normal. Some questions for you that you can look into:

- Did you hit a pothole and knock the front end out of alignment?
- Did you bend the rim?
- Are all the lug nuts tight?
- Did a wheel weight come off?
- Is the inside of the rim packed with snow causing an unbalanced situation?
- Is there any funny noises which could be associated with a CV that's well past worn and should be replaced?
- On the passenger side of most older VW's, there's a rubber piece on the longer driveshaft. Is this in good condition or is it loose, coming apart, or partially missing?

Clearly you will need to do some more investigating on your end, unless you want to take it to an alignment shop and see what they find.

i had the same problem on a dodge truck couldn't figure it out till a wheel came flying off. turned out that the lugs had started to pull through the rim after the garage didn't put the tire on right by the time it came off broke every lug bolt and destroyed the holes in the rim where they go.

82vdub wrote:Typically a sudden change means there's something that happened that isn't quite normal. Some questions for you that you can look into:

- Did you hit a pothole and knock the front end out of alignment?
- Did you bend the rim?
- Are all the lug nuts tight?
- Did a wheel weight come off?
- Is the inside of the rim packed with snow causing an unbalanced situation?
- Is there any funny noises which could be associated with a CV that's well past worn and should be replaced?
- On the passenger side of most older VW's, there's a rubber piece on the longer driveshaft. Is this in good condition or is it loose, coming apart, or partially missing?

Clearly you will need to do some more investigating on your end, unless you want to take it to an alignment shop and see what they find.

I definitely hit a bunch of potholes lately. The roads in Maine are so horrible! It's frutstrating. I don't believe any of the rims are bent. The lugnuts are tight because I just checked. No snow in the rim. No other funny noises that I can recognize. I will check my rubber piece on the driveshaft. Great suggestions thank you. I'll post anything else I find.

medwardl wrote:i had the same problem on a dodge truck couldn't figure it out till a wheel came flying off. turned out that the lugs had started to pull through the rim after the garage didn't put the tire on right by the time it came off broke every lug bolt and destroyed the holes in the rim where they go.

That sounds horrible. I would have held the garage accountable.

oh they fixed it they didn't feel like dealing with me angry.

If you hit a lot a potholes I wonder if you could've broke some bands in a tire causing a bulge? Or it could've knocked a wheel weight off.

I had something like that on Jezebel - turned out the large nut on the end of the axle shaft in the center of the wheel had come loose. It made me think I was in for $1K worth of repairs till it was tightened up!

Oh yeah, one thing I forgot to mention. The other day I tried rotating my two front tires. The Driver's side tire was wearing pretty hard on the inside part of the tread....also, the passenger's side wheel would not come off....like it was stuck on.

"The Driver's side tire was wearing pretty hard on the inside part of the tread"

yer gonna want to get an alignment.

as for the tire being stuck on if they are aluminum rims that would explain that i dislike aluminum rims with a passion.

Since I've owned and driven my share of cars that probably should have been in the junkyard, I'm familiar with stuck on rims. Steel sticks to steel and depending on how often you remove the wheels, they can rust together. I haven't had any issues with sticking rims ever since I started smearing a very thin layer of wheel bearing grease (the thicker stuff, not general grease) on the back of the rim before I install it. It's just enough to cause the rims not to rust, or keep them from rusting together, something like that. Been doing that now for 25 years.

a while ago, my steering wheel would violently shake back and forth after a certain speed, and would not stop until i came to a complete stop. in my case, it turned out to be a bad passenger side outer CV. the boot was torn, and i guess the cv was binding, causing the shakes. something to look at, along with strut bushings, tierod ends, and alignment.

You can also have a bent rim or bad tire. The bad tire is sometimes a tuff one. That's where an extra set of tires and rims comes in to track this down. I have had small bulges and broken cords. Smokey and the bandit is fun but has it's down side.

I swapped my front tires from left to right, and my car is now shake free. I have always read that with radials you are not supposed to change direction when rotating, but it worked for my car. I had rebalanced the tires previously and it made no difference.

VW Jon wrote:I swapped my front tires from left to right, and my car is now shake free. I have always read that with radials you are not supposed to change direction when rotating, but it worked for my car. I had rebalanced the tires previously and it made no difference.

That "not supposed to change direction when rotating" advice was definitely true when radials were first becoming commonplace in the U.S., say around the mid-1970s. Today, however, AFAIK no tire manufacturers are spouting that caveat anymore. IDK why, but maybe it's due to advances in tire technology. (OTOH I personally have yet to spot any catastrophic failures that we suspected were due to 'cross-rotation'.) VW Jon,how many miles do you have on the car since swapping side-to-side 'solved' the front end shaking problem?

Most radial tires work so well that they (largely due to the flexible sidewalls) can mask a wide variety of steering & alignment ills, sometimes up to the point where a suspension or steering linkage piece literally falls off the car. Power steering systems also insulate drivers from symptoms of problems, and along with the radial tires, lull operators into a false sense of confidence, while ripping down the road with imminent major suspension/steering issues.

It seems like the 'inner tie rods' of rack & pinion steering systems get a lot of wear that isn't noticed, since they're hidden inside boots & protection tubes and not that visible on a 30-second quickie inspection.

Soft bushings also usually crap out faster than the harder units, and they can really put front ends out of alignment on-the-road, but aren't readily apparent at a cursory check. May not be true for most VW diesel freaks, but a 'soft ride' still sells vehicles to most people, and you won't generally find owners of front end shops complaining that the parts & service are too expensive when things eventually do disintegrate, rendering a vehicle non-functional, in lieu of hyper-expensive repairs.

Hey... we've got the Bentley manual!