Steering Wobble

Can anyone help, I have a 1994 300Tdi, when travaling at 70mph the steering starts to wobble, as i slow down it gets worse. I had the wheels balanced, any ideas?

prop uj's?

discofug said:

Can anyone help, I have a 1994 300Tdi, when travaling at 70mph the steering starts to wobble, as i slow down it gets worse. I had the wheels balanced, any ideas?

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I bent my steering recently and after fitting a new steering damper the steering is transferring all the road shocks through to the steering wheel.

I have not had a chance to run it with it off yet, but it's a britpart so perhaps it's ****.

Drag yerself under and see if yours is ****ing oil out, and if it is take it off and operate it by hand, odds on it's fooked.

hi discofug your problem is your steering preload on your swivels
disconect all track rod ends and see how easy both hubs move from side to side there should be 12 to 15 foot pounds resistance
but on older discos you usually find that all you need to do is deshim your swivels
hope this helps
gaz

discofug said:

Can anyone help, I have a 1994 300Tdi, when travaling at 70mph the steering starts to wobble, as i slow down it gets worse. I had the wheels balanced, any ideas?

Click to expand...

The first place I would be investigating is your swivel bearings and their preload.

On the front axle at each side there is a shiny ball-looking thing inside of each wheel. This is your swivel. Inside here are bearings top and bottom and need to tensioned using thin spacers called shims.

On the age of your vehicle it is likely that there is some wear in the swivel bearings so I would suggest you test for that before doing anything else.

To do the test do the following:

1. Jack up the front drivers side so that the wheel is off the ground, taking all security measures, like chocking a rear wheel, leaving it in gear and diff-locked etc.

2. While some sits in the drivers seat pressing the brake pedal firmly, grab the wheel at 12 & 6 'o clock and try rocking it.

If there is a little play then you may be able to reduce it by taking one or more of the shims out.

Now do the same on the other front wheel.

If there is a lot of play, it is likely that your swivel bearings need replacing. This is not an expensive job if you do it yourself as the parts are cheap to buy. It will take an average diy mechanic about 1-2hrs to do each side but it will feel loads better when done.

Do you have a Haynes manual, if not get one.

Here are some links which you may fine useful:

FRC7065DIS3KITNB Swivel Kit - no ball - front axle non ABS from JA032850

Good luck

Cheers
Dave

That's a good post Biglad, and one that I'll bear in mind. When I went to Newcastle last weekend I was getting steering wheel shakes from about 55mph to 70mph and then if I had to brake down from 70 it was real bad. Already had the front wheels balanced but popped back to geordie kwikfit and they had another look for me. Turns out (excuse my ignorance but I don't know much about tyres!) that my tyres were offroad tyres which I didn't know, but that they were badly worn - feathered and with large flat spots worn in the tread. At first glance they looked good with loads of tread but in fact they were completely illegal and crating an awful ride like driving on bumps!
I contacted Martin, a very nice man in Leicester via Ebay who was selling a set of old alloys with good tyres, balanced with new valves, told him my plight and we came to an agreement so I was able to stop en route back down south and pick em up. Got them on the car now but not had a chance to test them at speed - I will find out this sunday when we head to Wales whether that has sorted the shaking problem or if it is something else. Fingers crossed!
'Course, not sure what caused the bad wear in the first place! Was going to get tracking checked but Kwikfit down south said they couldn't cos mine is left hand drive and Kwikfit oop north said they couldn't cos disco tracking is complicated with 2 sets of adjustments per side!?

sp33der said:

Was going to get tracking checked but Kwikfit down south said they couldn't cos mine is left hand drive and Kwikfit oop north said they couldn't cos disco tracking is complicated with 2 sets of adjustments per side!?

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Poor tracking normally just gives you wear on tyre edge, and tends to be the same all round the tyre. Toe-out wears the insides and toe-in wears the outsides. Flatting and feathering more likely to be caused by poor balance or some other alignment problem (or on a Freelander by over-inflating the rear tyres by a mere 2psi!). My tyre man won't do the Disco tracking either, but he was able to check mine to see whether it was within tolerance. My indie mechanic says they're all different so he just adjusts the track if he spots tyre wear on a service!