65-72 mph shimmy solved!

[dmleonard]

I know there are a ton of threads on this and everyone seems to have differing results, but I finally solved mine and thought I would share it.

My car has done this since the day I bought it. I’ve been through countless re-balancing of the tires, changing tires, rotating the tires, changing tire pressure, etc. Some things would lessen the severity of it, some would get it to start earlier/later, stop earlier/later, on and on, but nothing got rid of it. I had given up trying to fix it and just decided to live with it well over a year ago.

In the interest of keeping things short, I put a front sway bar kit in and the problem is completely gone for the first time. I wasn’t trying to fix the shimmy, but for whatever reason it worked. It's likely a combination of things.

This may not fix it for everyone, but for $16 and 20 min of my time I thought I’d pass it along. My car has 155k on the original shocks, struts, ball joints, etc. The only thing that was replaced on the front suspension were the wheel bearings - they improved it slightly, but didn't eliminate it. I hope it works for someone else as well – I can’t tell you how nice it is to have the car sail smooth on the highway again.

[billberry12]

I have got to try that, but I am not very mechanically inclined. Can a novice do it? What do I need? How about a step by step instruction list.

Thanks in advance.
Bill

[billberry12]

Which one do I need?


http://www.autopartswarehouse.com/searc ... %20Pontiac

[screwstonjay713]

Ever since i bought rims for my car it has been doing that. I have had them balanced several times and no one couldnt seem to figure out what was going on. thanx for the tip i'll give it a try

[bonnevillain]

veery interesting. i have a moog swaybar kit sitting in my garage waiting for install. that would be great if it fixed the problem

[billberry12]

Please let us know if it does.

[dmleonard]

Yes, I would think a novice could do it - it's pretty simple actually. I just picked one up at NAPA as I have a store a few blocks from my house. I wasn't planning on doing it, just noticed it was looking pretty ratty and figured it would be cheap to replace. Good luck with it.
Napa part # NCP2651201

[billberry12]

Does the car need to be up on a rack? Or can it be done by crawling under it?

[Mark Fahey]

You can do it from underneath. Just not a lot of fun.

[swampthing]

can u explain what you do?
does the kit com with instructions?

[HurstGN]

In the interest of keeping things short, I put a front sway bar kit in and the problem is completely gone for the first time. I wasn’t trying to fix the shimmy, but for whatever reason it worked. It's likely a combination of things.

This may not fix it for everyone, but for $16 and 20 min of my time I thought I’d pass it along. My car has 155k on the original shocks, struts, ball joints, etc. The only thing that was replaced on the front suspension were the wheel bearings - they improved it slightly, but didn't eliminate it. I hope it works for someone else as well – I can’t tell you how nice it is to have the car sail smooth on the highway again.

Why were you putting the sway bar kit on in the first place? Did you see unusual wear on any particular components? I'm just thinking that others can look at the part(s) you noticed were questionable or even outright bad that led you to install the kit on your car, and if they see the same wear pattern on their car, they may want to follow these steps. It at least would give us something specific to look at under there. (I hope this makes sense)

Dan

[dmleonard]

I have a bad strut bearing, so I got a quote for shocks and struts. Needless to say, it was a little spendy, so I priced out the parts from rockauto. I pulled a wheel off to take a look and see if I thought I could do the job myself if I rented a strut tool. There was nothing in particular that popped out at me, but they were just really rusty and corroded. The salt really gives that stuff a beating in MN. I've had two vehicles before where they've actually rusted completely through.

I knew I'd replace them anyway if I did the struts, so I figured I would just replace them right away since I had the car up on stands and one wheel off. One side did snap when I put the impact on to remove it, so they were likely on their way out.

[2000Silverbullet]

Usually this type of shimmy is resolved by simply replacing the struts.

I have no idea how you would solve this issue by simply replacing the end links if the old links were still intact. I could understand if one or both were broken or the rubbers gone.

[repinS]

Seems like there are a lot of different solutions to the shimmy.

Yes I'm 92-99, but I lost mine simply by getting rid of the GY Eagle RS-A's in the rear, replaced them with good-condition used Michelin Hydroedge.

[golfyeti]

Did you replace the shocks/struts and the sway bar at the same time? In other words, do we know it was the swar bar that solved it?

I had the moog sway bar end-link bushings all around (not the actual sway themselves) installed on mine last fall and didn't notice a dfference in the shimmy. Turning was nicely tighter though. I haven't replaced my front shocks/struts yet so I'm hoping that this is the actual culprit because this is one of my next projects.

I would be much obliged if you did in fact solve it for us all!

[dmleonard]

The only thing I replaced was the sway bar links and bushings. As I said, I was able to make it better or worse with different tires, re-balancing, etc., so it is likely a combination of things. But for whatever reason, this solved it. I didn't do anything else - still haven't decided if I want to tackle the struts or cough up the money for someone else to do it.