Solved my Death Shake/Wobble
 

For the past year I have been struggling with a shake/wobble in the front steering/suspension. I have read many threads that have had the same problem and read and tried most of the suggestions in replacing suspect parts from both drive axles, rotors, bearings tie rod ends and rotating the tires. I, like most of you, saw no change in the shaking after replacing those parts which has been very frustrating. I finally broke down and put new tires on and had an alignment done. My car drives like it's brand new even though it has 225,000 miles on it. I wish I could tell you what exactly fixed the problem, new tires or the alignment. Since I did rotate the old tires from front to back before buying the new ones and saw no change at all I am really thinking that the alignment was to blame for most of the shaking/wobbling and unstable feel to the steering. I know some of you have the "Death Shake" come and go at different speeds I did experience that too along with it coming and going at constant speeds.

I guess what I want to say here is do not rule out tires and alignment as a possible cause for the "Death Shake". Thinking I should of tried those two things first and I would of saved some money.

Has anybody else noticed that our cars may be very sensitive to being out of alignment or do you think the tires were to blame?

Very curious as to whether or not this is the problem with my car. I'm bringing it back to the shop soon to have them take a look at it. My tires aren't more than a year old and they were just recently balanced.

By the way, an alignment will not cure any sort of wobble or shake. Think about it for a second; what is performed in an alignment. You're adjusting toe, camber, and caster, all of which have a direct effect on your tire wear and handling ability, but considering you're only adjusting parts that are bolted down tightly, you aren't actually reducing any wobble. It was your tires that were bad, and I've seen this happen before.

Thinking you are probably right but all 4 tires would have to of been bad since I did rotate the tires and it had no affect on the problem. If the toe was off considerably wouldn't that cause the tires to bind as they go down the road. Which I would think they would at some point want to jump back to a more straighter track and then start binding or fighting against each other as they go down the road again causing noise, vibration, wobble and unstable steering?

If the alignment is off a bit it wont wobble, but will wear the tires. Wobble is generally something out of balance, or loose. However, with that being said. if the alignment is way off then yes, you can get a wobble so to speak. The tires can lets say both pull out, then hop back. That would cause a more side to side shimmy. A bad tire/out of balance will be more of a up down hop. A loose steering linkage would feel sloppy.

Could have been a broken belt in the tire?