Steeri9ng shimmy

[ukrkoz]

i have 91 civic lx with 180 000 miles on ticker. had rotors turned maybe 1000 miles ago. car has no play in tie rods and tie rod ends.
at hwy speeds, 60 and above, shimmy in steering wheel develops to the point of being very annoying - and painful in hands. should i grab steering wheel hard, with both hands, i can stop it. the very moment i relax my grip on it, it starts that 1/8 of an inch shimmy side to side.

any ideas? i tugged on wheels yesterday which ever way possible - rock solid. also, even after rotors were turned, if i hit brakes at high speed, i have that "warped rotors" shake in steering wheel. i think both shimmy and that shake have same cause.

btw, had 2 engine mounts replaced yesterday, no improvement with shimmy, though engine shakes much less.

[ukrkoz]

well, like they always say - want things done right....

i replaced rotors today with brand new ones. though it did not make much sense, but i had issues with OEM honda rotors warping in a click before. maybe they did not hit it right while turning them this time, or something.
anyhow, shimmy in the steering wheel is gone both ways - driving between 60-70, and hitting the brakes.
tierod ends can be turned from hand, but hold tight, no play.

[Tony]

Glad to hear you got it fixed. Sorry I didn't respond earlier, but I was going to say they didn't turn the rotors right, or didn't torque the wheels down correctly. If they didn't make sure the machine was clean when they turned the rotors, they will come out "warped" when you put them back on your car.

[ukrkoz]

Originally Posted by Tony

Glad to hear you got it fixed. Sorry I didn't respond earlier, but I was going to say they didn't turn the rotors right, or didn't torque the wheels down correctly. If they didn't make sure the machine was clean when they turned the rotors, they will come out "warped" when you put them back on your car.

and that is a very good observation. i do not use "they", i do almost everything on my cars myself. but you have mentioned wheel torque, and as i got this little girl after being abused by student girl owner, she had to have those wheels on and off many times for all kinds of things i had to fix. so, i was just using high torque air gun on lug nuts.
but for some unknown reason, mostly out of laziness, i used long bar with 19mm socket yesterday, and noticed that lug nuts were not quite tight, which i did not expect from a 1300 ft/lb air gun.
so you might be absolutely right - it might have been simply not tight lug nuts.

[Tony]

Actually the torque specs on the lug nuts is only 82 ft. lbs. which isn't as tight as I like them, but I would atleast advise on using a torque wrench to make sure they are all torqued evenly.

My car has a little shake too it, it was worse till a couple weeks ago when I took it in the shop at school and flushed the brake fluid. For once I used a torque wrench and torqued the wheels to spec and that got rid of a lot of the shake. We torqued a brand new rotor on a truck(school's truck) with an impact, then removed the wheel and checked the rotor. Just from doing that, the rotor was already warped