Vibration

When I bought my intrigue a month ago, it had a slight high-speed vibration. That vibration has gotten worse by now, particularly when driving over 50mph and on smooth pavement. Sometimes it isn't noticable, other times the steering wheel will even shake a little. I think the tires need balanced, as I already tried just having the wheel nuts tightened. Any suggestions?

Also, the brakes vibrate under medium to hard braking - I think the back brakes are bad. They're probably the orignal brakes (01, 45700 miles). The dealer said they changed the front pads and rotors b4 selling the car to me, but they said nothing about the back ones. How much have you guys paid for pads+rotors? Did you use aftermarket (like napa or some other cheap stuff or good aftermarket) or gm stuff?

Is this rear discs? If so, moderately priced not, Chinese rotors and napa good pads will do. The vibration could a belt shift in tire, looseness in the steering or just plain wheel balance.

id agree with the fact that your tires need balanced, does it smooth back out if you go faster? say 75-80? if your not comfortable trying i dont blame you, and im not responsible if you die:)

it also sounds like your rotors are warped, does it do it under light braking? ive never heard of back rotors becoming warped but i guess its possible, for a cheap fix you could try taking the front rotors off and have them "turned", a lot of auto parts stores can do that, its about 15-20 bucks i think?

A few days ago, I took my 99 Intrigue into my local tire, shocks, and front-end shop for some new struts, thinking that at 80K miles it wouldn't hurt to replace them especially since I had just put on 4 new tires.

Anyway, the shop told me that the struts were fine but my front wheel hub assemblies were defective as were a few tirerods. It was expensive, about $700 for everything, but the car now handles better than new. Also, the noise that I had always thought to be road noise is now gone. The guy at the shop told me that many people don't know that their wheel hub assembleies are bad until they start making a horrible sound. I probably had been driving around with bad WHAs for the last 30K miles because it was about that time that I notice mild shaking in front whenever I applied the brakes. That too is now gone.

How many tie-rods did you buy? -You only need two.

By hub assemblies you mean the rotors were warped and that was causing the vibration?

The Ceramic brake pads can really cut into the rotors. The good part about this is that your brake pads rarely need changing. The bad is that if you do need your brake pads replaced most like you will need to replace the rotors. But rotors are fairly cheap $30-40.

The stock OEM tires sometimes make more noise especially as they wear down. My dad had one (only one) that would hum (low tone continous thumping sound) especially above 40mph. He thought it was a damaged rim, (and it may still be) but the new long-life $100 each touring tires really helped lower the noise and hum.

I got 2 outer tie rods and the right inner tie rod. No, it had nothing to do with the brakes or rotors. The part was call "front hub bearings." Apparently, the front wheel bearings are now manufactured in a pre-lubed unit that cannot be dis-assembled.

Since the front-end work and the new tires, I have only driven the car about 10 miles. Probably next week-end will take on a 170 mile highway cruise.

BTW, I filled my new tires with nitrogen for a buck a tire.

Also, panzer, what is your estimate on the life of the struts in an Intrigue? Or, when do most people replace them?

There is no set mileage to replace struts, 170k on my fwd Gm car, good roads though, anyway bounce the car up and down in ft see if it comes back up only one time and doesn't bounce a couple of times and seems stable not mushy.

There is no set mileage to replace struts, 170k on my fwd Gm car, good roads though, anyway bounce the car up and down in ft see if it comes back up only one time and doesn't bounce a couple of times and seems stable not mushy.

Thanks Max for that information. I've tried the bounce test before but it is too subjective for me. Sounds like my struts have a loong way to go although I suspect the decline curve for them is gradual enough that one doesn't really notice the difference until they are "shot".

Going backto my vibration, it sometimes smooths out, but for no specific reason - it's not like it smooths when I turn or go uphill or whatever. However, I notice it sometimes pretty badly around 35 mph, but usually not. Typically, it shakes above 50mph, but below 75. Many times when I go above 75 it'll stop shaking, but once I go above 95 mph it gets really bad.

Take those tires off and really have a good look at those rotors. My dad's rear's were really falling apart due to impurities in the metal causing rust pitting. They were basically falling apart. These are cheap to fix. A good time to replace the pads also. New Brake fluid?

If you can, jack the car up and put it on jack stands so the wheels are free to rotate. Rotate the tires and look for problems. Actually grab the tires by the side and look for loose bearings (shake the tire (side/side, up/down)-it should be very tight). Do the bearing show excess heat after a long drive? Compare one bearing's heat to another.

Very well could be a wheel weight falling off also. You should see a clear/clean area where it fell off. Most likely it's something like this. Maybe a tire broke a belt inside (hard to tell sometimes). Rotate tires and see if the problem is still on that corner.

I did not know the Intrigue had inner and outer tie rods (4). My 1966 Charger has this also and I just replaced all 4 with Moog tie-rods. $39x4 = it starts getting expensive. I just took the whole thing out (left inner tie-rods connected) on my Charger, matched it up with the new ones and slapped it back on.

I did check my Intrigue tie rods when I changed the tranny fluid and everything looked nice and tight. And I'm hard on cars so that says alot about quality. I haven't had to have a realignment in 5 yrs either. Very little rust/corrosion on the underbody or exhaust. My dad has a 99 and had to replace a tie-rod or two, and has had wheel hum due to what he says is a damaged wheel. I think it was a crappy OEM tire, because he changer to $100 high-mile tire and the car drives great now.

A good/great set of tires does wonders for the Intrigue. I believe this is one of the best improvements you can make. I have BFG Control+ series 80k-65k mile tires with good winter traction. These are excellent tires for Wisconsin. Good traction yet hard enough for good mileage.

About shocks or struts:

The tech has really improved in this area due to better plastics/rubbers/metals and oils. A strut can last a very long time now where unlike the old 50's/60's/70's/80's $10 shocks (new $10 shocks will also benefit from the new tech) when I would say 3-5-7 years was very good. It wouldn't surprise me if some of these struts last 20 yrs. Maybe 10 yrs for lesser quality ones. I haven't even looked at my Intrigue ones since there hasn't been a reason to. I would expect Intrigue quality to be good/vg and expect close 10yrs for average use/conditions/driving. The Intrigue has VG suspension from the factory, so the quality has to be good to begin with.

You will know when they go bad on the Intrigue. It will be that obvious. Either a horrible moise when pushed down or it will act just like a spring and be very bouncy. So the car will drive very bad, bouncy and/or take huge suspension hits.

Going backto my vibration, it sometimes smooths out, but for no specific reason - it's not like it smooths when I turn or go uphill or whatever. However, I notice it sometimes pretty badly around 35 mph, but usually not. Typically, it shakes above 50mph, but below 75. Many times when I go above 75 it'll stop shaking, but once I go above 95 mph it gets really bad.
When the 50/55mph barrier comes up and the car starts to shake usually this is an alignment issue and after 65mph/70mph or so it starts to clear-up. Did you recently hit something or hit a bad pot-hole? Check for a wheel weight coming off also. You may be able to see uneven tire wear (toward side of tire) on those front tires also.

Have a good alignment shop (not those fast sale ones) look at it. I had a 75 Olds that never could go back into alignment due to a catastrophic hit. My 75 would rub off the left outside part of the tire to the metal strip/bead. I would rotate tires and buy cheap ones for the front. I you can fix this condition get it done, because it's a pain in the ass/unsafe on snow/hard on the car etc.