Shaking Acura
#1
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Shaking Acura
My son's 89 Acura Integra RS was shaking above a certain speed. He brought the car in and ended up buying 4 new tires, with wheel balancing and also an alignment.
After that, the car still started shaking when he went above about 60 mph and it strongly pulled to one side. He went back to the shop, where they showed him a computer printout of the alignment with everything to spec and they told him the shaking and pulling was caused by something else than the wheels or the alignment and they couldn't help him with that.
My question is: What else could cause the shaking and pulling?
After that, the car still started shaking when he went above about 60 mph and it strongly pulled to one side. He went back to the shop, where they showed him a computer printout of the alignment with everything to spec and they told him the shaking and pulling was caused by something else than the wheels or the alignment and they couldn't help him with that.
My question is: What else could cause the shaking and pulling?
#3
yo fordman(mickey ray), i thought you were banned
hukre: there's a lot of variables here and most can't be resolved over the 'net'
the alignment is only as good as the person setting up the machine onto the vehicle. if it's off by a tiny amount, the 'specs' are meaningless. the specs themselves leave a lot of tolerance, and i've seen vehicles 'in' on the specs, but still drive terrible, as one side is to one extreme, and the other is to the opposite extreme. both are 'in', but the tolerance stackup makes it be 'out'. i've even seen people lean on the sensors to make the final printout be 'in'.
ditto goes for the balancing job, lazy or thorough on the job makes all the difference.
new tires, can be very bad out of the mold. especially cheap tires(under $50 a piece), but even expensive tires can be bad too, but less likely. the human eye can't see it 'bad', it's just made bad, and it takes a special machine to determine that. (if your interested, it's called "road force variation" that is out of limits)
bent rim, bent axle, worn axle, worn c/v joints, loose tie rods(inner and outer), loose ball joints, bad brake rotors.....all cause vibrations, and the list is bigger than that too.
it's time to take it to someone competent, and have everything documented for some recourse with that first place that "can't help you anymore".
hukre: there's a lot of variables here and most can't be resolved over the 'net'
the alignment is only as good as the person setting up the machine onto the vehicle. if it's off by a tiny amount, the 'specs' are meaningless. the specs themselves leave a lot of tolerance, and i've seen vehicles 'in' on the specs, but still drive terrible, as one side is to one extreme, and the other is to the opposite extreme. both are 'in', but the tolerance stackup makes it be 'out'. i've even seen people lean on the sensors to make the final printout be 'in'.
ditto goes for the balancing job, lazy or thorough on the job makes all the difference.
new tires, can be very bad out of the mold. especially cheap tires(under $50 a piece), but even expensive tires can be bad too, but less likely. the human eye can't see it 'bad', it's just made bad, and it takes a special machine to determine that. (if your interested, it's called "road force variation" that is out of limits)
bent rim, bent axle, worn axle, worn c/v joints, loose tie rods(inner and outer), loose ball joints, bad brake rotors.....all cause vibrations, and the list is bigger than that too.
it's time to take it to someone competent, and have everything documented for some recourse with that first place that "can't help you anymore".
#4
There's a few possibilities here. It is possible for an alignment to be within tolerences and still not be right. There is a difference between "acceptable" and "preferred". If the left and right splits go to the wrong direction, it can cause a problem. Calibration is becoming not much of an issue anymore due to the fact that the new camera technology highly used these days reguires no calibration or leveling. The first thing I would do is cross the front tires from left to right. This will tell you if your dealing with a tire problem or a car problem. The vibration/shimmey part of the complaint has nothing to do with alignment. For that I would look for a balancing issue, a bent wheel or excess runout of the new tire. Post back with what you find.