So i'm sure most remember my lowering thread.

Well I've been having the passenger wheel wobble every once in a while when i happen to hit a bump or something kinda large.

It's only isolated on the passenger side. It doesn't feel like a vibration, more of the actual wheel shacking a bit. Enough so that i feel i need to slow until it stops.

What could i have broken or not tightened enough to do something like this? Ball joint bad?

 

First thing I'd do is make sure the wheel is still balanced properly.

 

Jack it up and see what is loose or worn out. Ball joint or tie rod end is a good bet.

School done for this year????

 

Yep. All edumacated nows.

How do i tell if a ball joint or tie rod end is bad?

 

Jack it up and 'wiggle' the tire. Grab the tire at the top and bottom, and then also at the 3 and 9 o'clock and wiggle, shake, push pull, or however you want to call it. Look for any movement in the ball joints and tie rod ends. ALSO if the tire moves but they are OK then a bad wheel bearing is likely.

Congrats on making it thru another year of school. How many more to go now?

 

Figured i'd bring this thread back up since the other got too personal for some giving advice.


Just got back from Midas who did a "free" visual inspection of the suspension and found a few things.

1. My tie rod end was lose on the driver side, the opposite side that i thought i had a problem.
2. this lose tie rod looks like it caused a little ware on the steering knuckle which they said i should get replaced. If those here think so too then i'll look into it(i know i'm sure it'll be a lot of $$) They said they could tell since the ball joint rod? had some silver(aluminum) wear on it.

3. They said the tie rod ends were not "bad" but could definitely use replacing seeing as how cheap they are and how much nicer the newer ones would be.

4. They said the wheel bearings on both front tires were bad....costing a few hundred apiece....now the rims don't even cost that much so i'm not sure what i'll do with that info...

Now they seemed VERY professional and knowledgeable people so i'm inclined to believe everything they said, but then again they are a business and don't know corvettes all that well so i'm needing advice from those here as well as from research I need to do on my own.

Now i have a feeling the tightening of the tie rod end on the driver side may have fixed my wobble, i haven't checked and even so feel like i need to keep at this problem so it doesn't come up and bite me even harder in the future.

 

Get a 2nd opinion. Wheel bearings are not that hard to replace or that expensive. Most of the suspension parts on the old cars are showing some wear. Does that mean they need replaced ? Mine has 140,000 miles and I have only replaced one inner tie rod end due to wear. The Midas guy is doing his job. Selling parts and labor. If the car drives good, just replace parts as needed. Learn to do it yourself and save some $$$$$.

 

The car had a wobble at high speeds so i guess it wasn't driving very well. But i've yet to take it out at high speeds to see if the wobble persists since they've tightened the lose bolt on the tie rod end.

....i feel pretty dumb but it was finger tight and it came off without him needing to do anything with a wrench. Pretty scary too seeing as how that could have popped off while driving at any time.

I'll see if it still wobbles but since i lowered it i need an alignment anyway so maybe i'll replace the tie rods to be safe and look at the knuckle while i have it on a stand.

 

Did you do the test I mentioned in response #5?

 

I did on the passenger side, which was the side i was dead set the problem was on, and didn't notice a whole lot of movement. Could have been inexperience on my part or there wasn't much movement on that side.

But i also jacked it up from the jacking point which i see they jacked it up at the A arm which is what i read about later on i needed to do.

But i was so dead set on the problem being on the passenger side that i never even looked at the driver side. Sure enough a lose bolt...

I was watching while they did the wiggle test at their shop and for the most part i didn't see it wiggle a whole lot once they tightened the tie rod. Which means either they can see/tell more then i can or there wasn't much really that lose and they defaulted to wheel bearings. I'm just not sure how much wiggle is allowed if any...

 

Two threads and a gazillion posts and you can't tighten nuts! Your problem is that you only hear what you want to hear.

 

All i heard in the last thread was how i NEEEEEEEEDEDDDDDDDD to get an alignment. I know it probably wasn't that and even if it was i wanted to check out other potential problems first so i did....

I checked what everyone else had said, jack car up, check for wiggle, made sure things were tight ......

I did all that except i did it on the tire that i was 100% sure was the problem. Turns out it wasn't the problem and i definitely feel bad that i missed checking the other side completely but I am glad i didn't go out and waste $100 on an alignment that i would have had to have redone once i found out that things needed to be replaced.

 

The point you are missing is this. If you had gone for that alignment, any competent technician is going to check for loose and worn parts first. I think that is what you eventually did.

 

Did you ever fix the big gap in your spring from this thread?

http://forums.corvetteforum.com/c4-g...lp-needed.html

 

yep. that's exactly what i did. Now i just need to figure out IF i should replace some of the things they say were bad....

 

This is the second time this thread has appeared in a week. Perhaps moving it to the Tech area would help resolve it.

 

Don't think that is the problem.

 

NO!!!! Not yet. You still need to check it further before throwing money and parts at it. Get it jacked up again and have a friend wiggle the wheels while you look for any movement. There really should be no movement in the tie rod ends, none in the upper/lower ball joints and very, very little in the wheel bearings. That is rudimentary, but the best description I can do from hundreds of miles away.

 

Yeah. I mean i was watching them very close as they did it at the shop and didn't see much movement at all. I'll definitely jack it back up and look at both sides this time and see what i think when i do it.

Once they had tightened the lose bolt they wiggled it again. Took them a few seconds of staring at it, then said....."i think it's the bearings..."

So from what i saw and from how they came to their conclusions there wasn't much movement and what little they did see they attributed it to the bearings needing to be replaced.

 

no i don't think you should do the work !!! you are going to kill someone let someone do it that knows what they are doing