It would be great if I could fit the whole question in the title...

Sometimes when accelerating in second gear, I feel a wobble thats possibly coming from the wheels at 20mph. It only last for a moment. It started to occur when I lowered the car. I thought getting my alignment would take care of it (only the toe was adjusted), but the problem still occurs. Does anyone know what may have caused this, how I can fix it, or if it will pose an danger or issues?

 

get the wheels balanced?

 

wheel bearing but that would happen always

 

Man mine does the same thing, i posted on another thread about it, never got an answer, between 15-20mph its a slight shake for about 1 second then its gone.

 

Chances are its your CV joint or wheel bearing, axle, an alignment, the tires need to be balanced, or the tires are improperly warn.

First, inspect your tread. If you see no unusual wear patterns, bring it to a mechanic and have them inspect the CV joint, axle, etc.

If those are not the case (and hopefully they're not), then you either need to balance your tires, align your car, or get a new tire.

 

it could also be caused by a slight bend in the rim

 

My tC does the same thing. But it didnt start happening until i put my coilovers on, im assuming thats the reason why because my tire wear is bad lol, but im getting new tires soon, so we'll see what happens after that

 

Hmmm.. Good information, guys. Thanks pyroman. My tire wear seems fine. I haven't been lowered for more than 7 or 8 weeks. I'll have my current stock tires on my new wheels later this week. Of course, they will be balanced. I'm going to get an alignment again as well. I'll update on if this fixes the issue or not. If not - it's time to look into the expensive. Wheel bearings, CV... bleh. Hoping for the best.

 

Check that the tires are not feathering... What kind of rims do you have? OEM?

 

Yes, OEM.

 

Have you rotated your wheels just to make sure it's not the wheel/tire? I keep thinking it's the tire because when i was lowered my tires started feathering and would bounce between 15-25mph. You could feel the feathering on the tires because they where out of round.

 

Sounds like a possible reason. His weekend I'll have my tires thrown on my new wheels. If it doesn't fix the problem, I'll try to rotate. If that doesn't do it, it has to be something other than the wheels/tires.

 

mine did the same.. and my axle was shot.. check your cv boots, they may be torn and have no grease.. best thing to do is to stop driving right now.. lol i didn't know what was wrong with my car, and i drove probably another 1k miles and then it got REALLYYY bad..

 

^ Impossible to stop driving. If anything serious like that happens - I'm going to Toyota and causing a scene. My car only has 62k miles, and was bought from Toyota as at 55k. But then again.... they'll probably give me ____ because I'm no longer on stock suspension.

 

One possibility could be a worn center axle bearing. That bearing supports the right axle shaft in the middle, and is mounted on the engine block. One way of checking it is to grab the axle at the point between the center axle bearing and where the end of that axle goes into the transaxle. Wiggle it at that point up and down and see if that bearing has play in it. There will be some tolerable play, but you should be able to determine extreme play by doing this. Replace it if it's extreme.

Obviously, lowering your car changes the angle of the axle shafts. The left axle shaft is shorter because the tranny is on the left side. The right axle is longer and are prone to more vibrations with length, especially when your changing the angle of that longer axle and stressing out that center bearing. Just to let you know the right axle are two shafts, inboard and outboard shafts. This is the only thing I can relate it to in regards of your symptoms.

 

UPDATE:

I had my RPF1s put on my stock tires yesterday, mounted and balanced, and I still feel the wheel wobble. Its not as severe, maybe because these wheels are much lighter than stock wheel? I still want to try an alignment. If that doesn't help then I'll poke around looking for loose parts or something. I'm hardly mechanic inclined so I will most likely have to take it in to Toyota.

Do you think that they will immediately give me s___ because of my aftermarket suspension?

 

balance the wheels! rotate your tires (front to back) and see if you get the same shaking... if not, then the wheels that were in the front need to be balanced.. its better to balance all four wheels so that there is no shaking at all..

now if you get shaking when you brake, then you need to get your brake rotors re-surfaced. resurfacing rotors shouldnt cost more than 20 bucks.. hope this helps a little..

 

I still haven't gotten an alignment (been saving to get my bumper cover fixed), and I still have not been able to rotate my tires front to back and back to front. I'm going to do all of the above ASAP and even see if I can determine and axle issues on my own. But as of right now, all fingers seem to point towards axle problems. I posted a question on Yahoo! Answers as well... and everyone that has replied has said it's most likely an axle problem.