hardeejr

If you're not getting a vibration in the steering wheel, I'd say its probably the balancing of the rear wheels that is off. I had mine done at WW Tire here in glorious Watertown, SD - which is far from where anyone on these forums lives I'm sure... Try swapping the front and rear wheels and see if the steering wheel wobbles then. If so, then I'd say its narrowed down to one (or both) of the rear wheels being off balance...

Jackmup

I sort of agree. What I think is hapening is that any imperfection caused by imbalance, CV joints, road surface effects the bad control arms in a negative way. So by having all of your other parts perfect you would have no Vibration to mess with the control arms. If you buy into my theory for a second, it could be any number or combination of things causing the problem and that is why so many have it, have a difficult time resolving it, and have had success after replacing different parts. Mine has without a doubt improved but now I feel a very slight vibe at 75-80 instead of 50-65. I still need to replace my front lowers when they arrive. I am also looking for a race shop to high speed balance my brand new road forced balanced tires. But if you think about it the only difference between this car and my Chevy trucks font end wise is that the truck is not floating on rubber bushings. Trust me my truck tires are never balanced well enough not to vibrate but it does not show through the steering.


BTW "I have heard"(take that with a grain of salt) the new cars with the vibration have not been corrected by the new redesigned rear lower control arm.

68jcode

Mystery solved. I finally got sick of the vibration which has continued to get worse and took my car to an indie who works on VW & Audi's primarily. Long story short, he isolated the problem to 1 of my tires having irregular wear pattern which essentially made it out of round. I checked back and found that I purchased my tires in fall of 2008, not mid 2009 like I thought (was confused with the 3 other cars I got tires for - not all mine though). Anyway, took it to the tire dealership and they confirmed the tire was toast and the other 3 were nearly as bad. In reviewing the order of work performed:

1)Tires in fall 2008 - mounted and balanced.
2)Control arms, tie rod ends, struts/shocks, front brakes, cv joints etc - Sept 2009.
3)Four wheel alignment done by my tire shop immediately following the work above.
4)Vibration very noticable and had my tires rebalanced - end of Oct 2009.

My theory is the worn parts wore my tires out and when I replaced the parts and had everything aligned and balanced, it was too late and actually perpetuated the problem. So now I have 4 new tires (they took good care of me disocounted 70%, mounted & balanced $160. Not cheapo tires either.) and am going to get a 4 wheel alignment just to be sure it is properly aligned. When the tire shop did the alignment they told me they thought they got the right settings, but there were 4 or 5 different alignment specs and they weren't sure. Great! So now I am going to have an Audi dealership do the alignment to be sure. I don't want this coming back in 2 months. Anyway, thought I would follow-up and put some closure on this thread to help others avoid some frustration.

68jcode

Well, looks like I jumped the gun. Although the vibration was significantly imporved, I am still noticing a problem at around 70mph, where I used to have it at 60mph. I am done trying to figure this out and will be putting in the shop next week. Just hope they can effectively isolate the problem without throwing the kitchen sink at it. The vibration is definately felt in the seat, which usually indicates driveline if I recall correctly. Will do some more searching, but let me know if you have some thoughts on what this could be.

janserce79

Did you check the rims? I had similar problem and it drove me crazy. Changed all tires and a bunch of other stuff. Did alignment and the problem was still there (especially in the morning, due to cold tires). After the tire shop tech balanced all tires, he told me my 2 rims are really off. To prove it he dismounted those tires and put only the rim on the balance machine. When spun you could see it off with no problem. (the rims defect was not a result of any accident, they didn't have a scratch!). The tech said with those rims on balancing would be impossible. I kept the rims on and told him to do his best. The vibration is minimal, it moves to the steering wheel when those rims are rotated to the front. Also I found that when I add a few extra PSI in the tires they vibrate less. It might not be your problem but it's worth checking when you're running out of ideas....Good luck!

Redneck Truck

Dealerships and tire shops should have balancing machines that check runout - that checks for bent wheels and out of round tires. A bent rim or out of round tire would also affect tire wear, so it may have been that wear was the effect rather than the cause.

WOWDee

on the inside surface of a tire rim ...... i am sure that it acted like a continually variable wheel weight as it heated up and lost and gained pebbles >>>>> hahaha !!!! I pryed it off with a screwdriver ..... reminded me of Caddyshack when Bill Murray retrieved the BabyRuth bar from the bottom of the pool ...... I DID NOT TAKE A BITE OF IT!!!!

68jcode

It's not tires or bent rims, had them checked a second time. It's been in an Indie shop 2 times in the last 2 weeks. They found the 3 bushings which mount the rear diff were excessively worn out and replaced them as well as 1 wheel bearing on the left rear (that had nothing to do with the vibration, but was on it's way out so had them replace). This helped reduce the vibration somewhat, but was still there. Sent the car back and they isolated the probelm to what they thought was one of the rear axles. They had a spare one at the shop and replaced it last night. Again, seems a little better, but still got a bad vibration so it will go back for another trip next week. Extremely frustrated trying to isolate this because otherwise the car looks and runs like new but I cannot stand the constant vibration in the seat of the pants above 60mph. If you have suggestions for other areas to check after reading everything already done, please let me know. They checked the ddriveshaft ujoints and they were nice & tight as was the carrier bearing. Not sure what else it could be!!

WOWDee

subframe must be removed if the torque converter or transmission was ever rebuilt .... if so ....was it re-installed correctly???

WOWDee

Noticed u did not replace calipers. Could u have a caliper hanging up enough to cause vibration ....... which may have caused the original warping of the rotors? It may be as simple as cleaning and greasing the slides ???