so i recently picked up an 02 lesabre limited for a daily. long story short is, bought the car being told that only issue it had was bad bushings in the drivers side control arm (drove great, aside from the fact that you could tell the shocks were pretty worn out, and a shake at highway speeds from the bad bushings). well, here i am after owning the car about a month, and ive now replaced just about everything under the car suspension wise and im still tracking down a shake and now a nice pull to the right when i hit the brakes. before i replaced most of the suspension, i asked a gm tech if he thought it might be an axle issue, and was told no, not possible. now that ive replaced everything else, im being told yes, axle lol, any imput on this? (shakes on take off from a stop and left hand turns, passenger axle?)

the pull has me concerned though. it started, or at least was far more noticeable after i replaced the drivers side control arm about a week ago. only did it under harder braking. last night i replaced the passenger side control arm and it threw my alignment out (steering wheel is now cocked a good bit to the right while driving down the road), so im assuming thats why my pull got even worse. now when like a little hill or something and the car kinda comes back down, you can feel it pull, as well as when you hit the brakes at all (doesnt seem to pull, at least not much at low speeds though). im being told the initial issue could be a drivers side brake hose collapsing.

i have an axle on the way to hopefully finally be rid of the shake issue. as for the rest, should i try a new brake hose and have it aligned, or is there something else i should be looking at?

Is it possible that you have one or more wheels out of balance? That could cause a shake, since nothing else you've done seems to have worked. I was also going to mention an alignment, but it sounds like you're going to end up getting that done anyway. An axle wouldn't have been my first thought either but as the great Sherlock Holmes once said, once you remove all impossibilities, whatever is left, no matter how improbable, must be it (paraphrased a bit). If it'* a brake problem, you should have a light. And, at least on my LeSabre ('04 Custom), the brakes are run on two circuits (right rear/left front, left rear/right front) and are calibrated so that if one circuit goes bad, the other will operate without pulling (haven't tested this, not in a hurry to). So I won't say it'* not a collapsed brake line, but Buick says it shouldn't cause the car to pull. I'd definitely have the alignment done, and new brake hoses never hurt, especially if they're original to the car. Keep us posted...

Thinking possibly a wheel or tire out of round depending on the type of shaking.

What brand tire?

What size?

Stock rims or no?

Including wheel bearings?

Is the shake only during braking or all the time?

If "all the time", what speed(*) is the shake at?

​​​​​​​Condition of the brake rotors and pads?

Thinking wheel bearings here too.

Wheel bearing? Maybe wheel/tire out of round?

Since you just installed an alignment-related part and the symptom changed, get an alignment and let'* see where this goes. I suggest a 4-wheel alignment while you're at it. While they're there, have them check for any play in the wheel bearings.

This has me making a weird face while scrunching my eyebrows. Brake hoses don't typically collapse.

Condition of pads/rotors?

Wheel bearings?
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Not trying to be flippant, just putting my thoughts for each item.

Take off the wheel, have someone step on the brakes. Does the hose deform in any way? Does the brake pedal feel spongy? If "no" then not a "brake line colapsing".

Find a shop where they will use a road-force balancer on your wheel/tire assemblies. We need to find out if they're round or not.
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Many brake problems won't present a light. Dragging caliper, bad brake hoses, warped rotors, etc. all will not present a light.

Are you sure about that? Should be seperate lines from the MC for front and rear leading to the antilock module, then four more lines leaving the antilock module towards each wheel respectively.

There would be pulling. The front brake rotors have more swept area, bigger pads, and are proportioned to apply more clamping force than the rears. If you had LF+RR or RF+LR all braking actions would pull towards the working front brake. Glad you haven't tried it though.

Yes, definitely. Do a four-wheel alignment while you're there.

Am I sure? No. I'm very new to Buick. This is my first one, and I've had it a week. I'm more accustomed to cars built pre-1990. The dual circuits is what I read in my owner'* manual. It'* also why bleeding is supposed to be done in a certain order (RR, LF, LR, RF). Just what I read...

As for the brake problems and the light, I kinda figured warped rotors, dragging brakes, etc. would be self-evident. I still remember back when I had my Lincoln and warped the rotors. Found out when I hit the brakes at 70 m.p.h. and the car shook so bad I though it was gonna fall to pieces right in the middle of the highway. I was thinking more subtle issues. That said, bear with me. I'm still learning my car, and won't actually start turning wrenches for another day or two. But between repairs now and upgrades over the winter, I'll know every nut and bolt in her

And yea, I'm rather happy that I've never had to test the no pulling thing myself...………………

Welcome aboard!

Just covering all skill levels. I didn't want pontiacfreak142 to think that these things would be called out by the brain and move on.

No problem, take your time. Let us know if you have any questions. These cars are a lot more sensitive than the older heavier sleds. My 1997 LeSabre, for example, would shake my teeth out just because a particular tire had a spot about a sixteenth of an inch taller than the rest. They balanced it out to zero. I had them 180 it on the rim and rebalance. Same thing. Always between 75MPH and 85MPH. Put same tire on the back, no issue at all ever up to 95MPH (closed course, professional driver, yada yada). Fix was new tire. I ended up going to 16" rims and 225/60R16 tires and it is night and day. No more shaking, great ride, and no more squirrelly awful skinny-tire nonsense that should never have been a thing on these cars. I have rambled. Back to the subject: None of my B-bodies ever cared about a tire with a 16th of a high spot, let alone making it worse on the heavy end. Different world in these newer ones.

Keep it up!





Hopefully pontiacfreak142 will come back with an update. ​