Well guys, latest problem...

After going mudding the past 2 days I have noticed a pretty severe "shimmy" in my steering wheel at speeds between 40 and 55mph.

By "shimmy" I mean the steering wheel will rock back and forth from left to right. Sometimes if I let go of the wheel and do one of those "look ma, no hands!" tricks the steering will go back and forth from left to right on its own.

I thought this might be a balancing problem so I went around the truck and looked at the wheel weights and they are all still there...well, the ones on the outside of the rim anyway.

BTW, the shaking only occurs within the first maybe 20* of turning the wheel...after I turn the wheel a good ways either direction the turning is smooth again.

Any ideas? I'm stumped...

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Before you spend any money, I'd start buy looking underneath it to see if anything is broken/bent (probably not but it doesn't hurt to look). Then I would get my tires balanced. If it still does it, then look at the idler arm.

Here's the link:
http://www.4x4wire.com/toyota/maintenance/idler/

It's easy to rebuild. I've done it already.

You could have bent a rim too. They would be able to notice it when they balace your tires.

Also make sure you don't have any big clumps of mud in any weird places. That could throw things off a bit.

That's all I can think of.

 

Thanks man!

I'll try and clean it really good in the few days, weather permitting and then if that doesn't do it I'll get a rebalance and if all else fails I will do the idler rebuild.

Thanks again, any more ideas are welcomed!!

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for me mudding was getitng too expensive, it seems to mess something up everytime... if i want to play ing the mud i lock my rear while in 2wd and do a few donuts and show off, because most peoples cars and suvs cant do donuts like i can....hahaha

 

Clean out your wheels, you might have mud stuck on the back side throwing your wheels out of balance.

 

OK, depending on how warm it get today I will make a trip to the car wash and investigate it a little more.

I appreciate the help guys, and as usual if anybody has any more ideas of what could cause this that'd be great!

Fink

 

I'd definitely have to agree. It happened to my friend's yota. Big clump of mud stuck on the inside of the wheel is throwing it off balance.

 

Well after successfully freezing my off at the car wash today, the steering isn't any better.

I think I am leaning more towards the balance problem. I may need to get the tires rebalanced...I now notice more vibration in general. I will go back to the car wash sometime this week...supposed to get in the mid 40's to low 50's so I will be able to spend more time under there.

Thanks for all the suggestions and I'll let you know how it goes, any more suggestions/ideas are welcomed as always!

Fink

 

It might be caked so badly you need to take the rims off to clean them out. I'd do that to make sure. If you need i have a nice floorjack you could borrow if you don't have one.

 

Ya know, you could have just looked at it first.

 

Yeah but I was going to the car wash anyway since I couldn't see out of either of my mirrors or any of my windows after my trip into the mud the other day.

I'll do some more cleaning and hopefully that will help...

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