I have a shimmy (back and forth) in my steering only at low speeds. Do you all think I just need an alignment or maybe something more serious?

-Chris

Alignment, hub, rack, tire weight.....alot of variables here. Need to jack her up and shake and yank. Get it up in the air and narrow it down some.

90 % of alignment problems won't shimmy " back & fourth".

good advise on getting it off the ground .

have it checked, if you can't yourself.
leaving it untill it gets worse coluld be a costly desision.

Speaking more along the lines of front suspension than alignment.....my goof.

Check out the whole front end. Wiggle and shake everything you can get your hands on, with the weight off the wheels.

You may have a shifted belt or a tread bulge in one of your front tires. You might not even need to jack up the car to find it: Just kneel by each tire, run your flat palms carefully over the tread from the high-noon position down each direction as far as you can towards the pavement, and see if the tread surface is smooth or not. A tread imperfection that'* big enough to wiggle your steering wheel shouldn't be too hard to find.

If you find nothing on either front tire that way, you'll have to put the front end in the air, put the car in Neutral and spin the tires.

Last winter I had a problem like this. When I jacked the car up and looked in there I found out it was a chunk of ice/snow pushing against my tire.

I had this problem and bad! Having the wheels and tires rebalanced helped considerably, but it turned out that I had a wheel that wobbled. (Not out of round, but basically the rim portion rotates on a different plane than the hub portion, if that makes sense.) Wheel Collision center fixed it, and now the problem is 90% gone. I think the other 10% may be the other front wheel. I'm guessing a previous owner must have gone curb hopping!

You may have a shifted belt or a tread bulge in one of your front tires. You might not even need to jack up the car to find it: Just kneel by each tire, run your flat palms carefully over the tread from the high-noon position down each direction as far as you can towards the pavement, and see if the tread surface is smooth or not. A tread imperfection that'* big enough to wiggle your steering wheel shouldn't be too hard to find.

If you find nothing on either front tire that way, you'll have to put the front end in the air, put the car in Neutral and spin the tires.[/quote]
My thoughts exactly!
Had the same thing happen in my Monte and it decided to finally let go while on the highway. Thought my whole frontend was going to fly off!