Subaru Outback got the shakes!

[bodhizafa]

My girls Outback has a strange shaking sensation through the steering wheel. Does not vibrate fast but rather a dull shake. She said she felt the whole car vibrating coming down out of the mountains (which may have messed up the steering causing the dull shake). I'm thinking the rotors are the culprit, but I'm not sure (not exactly a car mech :|). We thought it was the new tires at first but had the re-balanced with no luck. Any other ideas :dunno:

[Wrider]

Jack up the car, pull at 12 oclock and 6 oclock and wiggle.
Then pull at 3 and 9.
If 12 and 6 wiggle it's the ball joints
If 3 and 9 wiggle it's tie rods

As for the rotors, does it get worse while braking? Can you feel the car shimmy/brakes pulse/feedback through the pedal? If none of those it's not the rotors.

[bodhizafa]

I'll have to do that this week. I need to drive it, I'm getting info from her which I'm not sure how good the translation is. She said she was getting a good "full car" vibration coming down the hills when applying the brakes.
Driving around town the steering wheels has a slight shake/wobble now. But at slower speeds no car vibration.

I need to take it on the freeway and see what the brakes do, I'll jack it up and check the wheels Monday.

thanks for the info.

[chanke4252]

unless her wheels are really badly out of balance (mild balance issues can become more prevalent when braking), it's likely the rotors. i think it's hard to keep rotors in good shape unless you are really cognizant of how you treat them coming down from the mtns. you could try to bed them in again with a few 60/70-5mph stops. sometimes it helps, sometimes it makes it worse. i have better luck just taking it easy on the brakes for a while, usually any shake that start developing, goes away, at least that's the case with my previous impreza. alternatively, just deal with it more directly i guess.

[matt2778]

If it is a vibration only when braking, then it's most likely warped rotors. They will need to be machined. You cannot bed in brakes once they have been on the car for a while. Also she may have boiled the brake fluid, so double check that.

[MattTLS]

Also check cv joints.

[chanke4252]

If it is a vibration only when braking, then it's most likely warped rotors. They will need to be machined. You cannot bed in brakes once they have been on the car for a while. Also she may have boiled the brake fluid, so double check that.

you can rebed them if you can get through the pad material already deposited, it's just not necessarily going to happen that way every time. you are pretty likely to just add to any uneven deposits on the rotors during a rebed, so it's not always the best idea. really depends on the pads and the condition of pads/rotors. it can definitely be done with more aggressive, higher temperature pads on rotors that had been bedded in on less aggressive pads. the longer the vibration persists, the harder it is to correct.

stoptech had a good article on warped rotors a while back. at the very least "warped rotors" is a misnomer 99.9999% of the time.

[bodhizafa]

She actually hasn't complained about any vibration while braking for a week (since driving back from western slope).

Now its just this dull shake the steering has. I've driven it and barely noticed, it is there but its intermittent. Only seems to shake a bit when you first start a turn.

She's mostly worried that she is going to do further damage by driving it. And she's a poor nusring student so she would really like to put off any costly repairs. I'm going to check the wheels and joints stuff this week. Maybe take the tires back for a 3rd time to get balanced too.

[Wrider]

If it's only when starting to turn I'd put my money on loose tie rod ends.

[pannetron]

Did she hit a curb or pothole? Among the things others have mentioned, I would check closely for a bent front wheel. Check the wheels both radially and axially.

[bodhizafa]

Did she hit a curb or pothole? Among the things others have mentioned, I would check closely for a bent front wheel. Check the wheels both radially and axially.

She didn't mention hitting anything. I'll check though.

[bodhizafa]

So I checked the play in the wheels today. Tight as could be. I also switched the front tires with the rear. When I was taking them off the lugs were crazy tight, must haved been torqued by a gorilla. I checked online and they should have only been 65 lbs per square inch. ????? put the wheels back on (at correct torque) drove down 36 and wow, much much smoother. Still a shake under hard braking (Im thinking the rotors are at the end of their life), and a vibration over 75 mph (cheap tires?). But the around town driving dull shake is gone, so is any vibration under 75 mph.

thanks for the help and suggestions.

[asp_125]

torqued by a gorilla A gorilla with an impact gun. Seriously, some of the lug nuts put on by so-called tire shops are way over torqued.