Phantom Wobble any advice helps
 

I have a phantom wobble somewhere in the passenger side rear wheel. I can feel the wobble as soon as the car starts rolling but its faint.

All i know is its not a bend wheel, i moved the wheels and the wobble stayed in the PS rear.
So what else could it be? I was thinking maybe bent axle or hub maybe? Could a bent control arm make it wobble like this? i dont see anything visibly catastrophic back there.

Please guys just throw out what you're thinking.

Audi wheels are hub centric .. makes sure thee is no obstruction or corrosion around the centre of the hub stopping the wheel from sitting flat.

Also when did it start ? just suddenly ? usually components dont just bend...

do we now get the rest of the story ? :)

Lol sorry i didnt want to make the post too long.

The rest of the story is, i bought the car used about a year ago and it had a wobble then but i thought it was due to the bald tires. I got new tires and brought them back 3 times to get re-balanced cuz i thought for sure that was the problem but it never fixed it. I have been just living with it due to lack of funds but now i have the money to fix it.

There were dents all over the car when i bought it (they have since been fixed). Also, i know she had at least one bad wreck in it because right before i bought it she ran over a guard rail in the snow because she thought it was just a snow bank. She ripped a front ball joint out with that one.

So really it could be anything, i have no idea what else she did to the car. Mechanically everything else is great except this wobble, it is getting on my nerves.

It could be a bent rear axle. I first thought of a tire with broken tread but you had them changed.

Have you put the car up on jackstands and rotated the wheels under power? Have you visually checked for the wobble? Have you removed the RR wheel and used a stack of washers under at least two lug bolts to hold the rotor on the hub and measured runout? Have you pulled the rotor and thoroughly cleaned the hub/rotor interface (although this is generally done once you've determined excessive runout. Problems can often happen when you remove a wheel and the rotor turns on the hub and gets cocked on a bit of rubbish between the hub and rotor.)
Until you have done this and reported back, anything anyone can tell you is pure speculation, especially with a car with previous collision damage.

That being said, there are wheel balancers and wheel balancers. Just because someone says they balanced your wheel(s) doesn't mean it's adequate for one particular car. You generally get what you pay for with wheel/tire maintenance…a road force balance can tell you a lot.

But I would do some work with the car on jackstands first….get a good dial indicator and magnetic stand and use it if your Mark 1 eyeball cannot detect a problem.

Ya all i was really looking for was a little speculation. I was having a hard time thinking outside of the box.

I will clean the rotor and hub next. I dont think that is the problem but its an easy check. I tried to visually look by spinning the tire when it was up on the lift but i didnt see anything.
i think if i put it in gear on the lift i may be able to stay still and see the wobble better. I have no idea what a dial indicator or magnetic stand are but i will Google it and ask my mechanic if he knows where to find one.

Thanks sloop and ten speed.

OMFG.

It must be the moon phase! :D

ya i found that same video thank you tenspeed.

i will have to look into getting a dial indicator, my apologies for not knowing what one was.

I ran the car on the lift to see if i noticed anything with the naked eye and i did. i could make out a visible wobble on 3 of 4 tires.
i made some marks on the tires where i saw the tire pitch out and then stood on the side and made marks where the tire would move up. Those marks ended up being on almost exact opposite sides of the tires.

So then i looked at the rear axles to see if i could notice a bend in them. I think i noticed a small bend in both rear axles and it seems that where the axle was bowing outwards, that lined up almost exactly with where i had marked the tires outward pitch.

I dont know what to think, its hard to imagine that all of the axles on the car are bent. But, the car does have 240k and is still on what seems to be original axles and CV boots.

Also i thought i would add this in, the only wheel that DOES NOT seem to have any pitching to it is the wheel i just put a new wheel bearing in. The other wheel bearing dont seem bad, but maybe someone but them in slightly off or something.

I am going back to the garage to take the wheel off and bolt the rotor down to see if thats pitching too.