Steering wheel judders back + forth driving on highway

[91Bomb]

My steering wheel judders constantly back and forth while driving on the highway. It's not jumpy up + down so it doesn't appear tires are out of balance and car doesn't pull to either side so alignment seems ok and I don't hear anything either. What could be causing this?

 

[turboglenn]

Could be many things... Bad tie rod ends for one, bad ball joints or even bad wheel bearings but those would make some noises that would have gotten your attention long before now. Also, i've seen many times on 2g's especially where the CV's are bad and from lowering the car they get sorta stuck in an off center position or something where they shake like the dickens (mine did this when i first put my lowering springs on several years back)

Some other things to look at are small things like a possible bad belt in one of the front tires, down to a really out of balance front rim/tire assembly. It's not uncommon to loose one or moreof the weights used in balnacing leaving the tire/rim way out of balance.

personally i would think it's one of the suggetions in my first paragraph, most likely the tie rod end if the shake comes and goes or the CV axle if it's fairly constant and repeatable.

 

[91Bomb]

Ok thanks. I'll have to inspect the tie rods + ball joints closely. Are the ball joints easy to change?

 

[Ludachris]

When I used to do tech at NASA events, I would shove the tire from side to side to check for play in the wheel bearings. Though I have bad wheel bearings on my 2g right now and it's pretty loud once I get up over 40 mph. I'd think you would have heard the wheel bearings going bad.

I'm with Glenn, I'd start with tie rods and then ball joints. You might have to pop them off to inspect. How many miles are on the car, and when's the last time the rod ends were replaced?

The ball joints on the 1g are pressed in. If you don't have access to a press it might make more sense to have a shop change them. I changed mine when I was changing all my bushings over to poly. That was definitely not one of my favorite projects. I'm guessing the shop will need to pull the lower control arm to press them out, which means you'll also need to check the alignment again afterward.

 

[91Bomb]

I think I'm going to take the car into a shop and get everything looked at. Are there any national chain shops worth going to for front end inspection and possibly have basic work done?

 

[jtmcinder]

I know that you said that you don't think it's a wheel out-of-balance, but since that is often the cause, why not at least look to see if there's a clean spot on a front wheel (where a wheel-weight may have fallen off) or swap the wheels front-to-back (to see if that removes the problem). To pay a shop money to tell you that a wheel needs balanced would be painful.