This is a little hard to describe, but I'll do my best...

Sometimes when I'm going down the road I'll have the steering wheel jerk to the right or left randomly, usually back and forth for a few seconds and I have to fight with it to stay in the lane. Usually it's when the road is uneven, like nearing an intersection where the road has lots of little craters. Sometimes it happens at higher speeds. It seems to happen mostly on certain parts of the road though.

I didn't think it feels like an alignment issue. The car doesn't draw or fade to either side normally. Anyone had anything like this? It's just weird considering no other car I've driven has ever done it this wildly. Power steering maybe?

 

Rwd?

 

The groove on your tires are just catching onto the slits on the road. Its somewhat normal and more noticeable when your lowered

 

It's called tramlining...it is worse with wider tires

 

Huh, never knew that. Sure gets crazy though on some roads around here... I'm on stock suspension too. Would it get worse or better with a stiffer setup?

PS: It is my first RWD. Definitely not going to be my last

 

stiffer would increase the "jerkiness", softer would make the car feel like it is slightly "flowing" at times. your choice really lol. my dd is an evo9, bone stock, i've felt weird bumps and grooves that i couldnt even reproduce in another car at the same spot. once you get more "track" focused suspension wise the more noticeable the feeling of the road will be.

 

I've been experiencing the same tramlining problems more and more. My '04 Rx-8 has a little over 81,000 miles. It's really been getting annoying. I've since gotten an alignment done and it didn't help at all. My tires aren't showing unusual wear and I notice it with both my summer tires and my winter tires - more so with the summer but that was explained in the discussion on tramlining at the following link on TireRack. I'm beginning to think that my problems may simply be related to warn suspension parts. Here is a quote from TireRack:

You can read the full article at TireRack here:

My question would be, what should be replaced? What would be the "wearable" suspension parts? My Rx-8 will be 6 years old this July, should I give it an early birthday present and replace some parts?

 

Thats is probably more true towards older cars. In our cars is quite normal.

 

Hmm, I always wondered about this. I knew there was never anything wrong with the car when this occurred (and yes, its scary when your car just says - I'm turning left , surprise!) I knew it was the way my tires were finding the road and trying to stay even; I wasn't aware there was a whole science behind the issue!

Glad to know its normal.

 

I think Jeremy Clarkson said it best when he said our cars were very 'twitchy' on the road... so just pay more attention and dont slack off the wheel and youll be fine. I've noticed it gets worse on wet roads. just a price to pay to play i guess.

 

I would also check the suspension for broken end links.

 

i just drove an rx8 the other day in the rain on the highway with completely bald tires in the rear (picture slicks without the traction lol), 50% tread in front. jesus christ does the rear of this car wander over the road grooves.

kevin.

 

same situation and my rx8 is bone stock first car ever.. during a warm up all i have to do is turn the steering wheel slightly to the left or right and it starts jerking rapidly in the direction i spin it..What The F@#k man theres no power steering fluid and dont know what to do heard its electronic steering. any info for help???

 

I've got this too, it really doesn't feel "normal". It mostly happens when I'm coming to a stop, I've thought to look at the road while it's happening and no ruts or anything. I'll come to a stop and at about 5 mph all of a sudden the wheel is turning right about a quarter turn.

 

My car does this as well. I think when slowing the down the car's weight is transferred to the front wheels. This will cause the tires to grip the grooves in the road more aggressively.

 

Mine has always tramlined a bit. I race it so I dialed a bunch of negative camber in and that made it way bad. I would describe it just the way the original poster did... "sometimes violent" I just live with it since I did it to myself. I just keep a tight grip on the wheel at all times. It's possible the alignment shop he used messed up and put in too much neg camber. By the way lowering the car adds a bunch of neg camber so that's prolly why it happens right after lowering.

 

Sounds like you chose the wrong username!

 

Alot of this can be due to type of tire, wear, alignment.

What you call fighting can be considered normal tramlining.

So unless we can actually drive and examine your car we can't tell if you have a problem.

Descriptions over the internet can be very subjective. "Fight"

 

LMFAO....people looking...still laughing, but quieter.

kevin.

 

It's been a while since this thread was started. Have any of you guys that experienced the same problem gotten any resolution? Has anyone fixed it by replacing tires? Could it be problems with flaky PS connections? I've never had an EPS light so I'm hessitant to conclude that I might have dirty EPS connectors although I hear that It's quite common. I'd REALLY like to improve my steering situation. I'm really starting to lose patience.

 

mine did the same thing with closer insepc it was 2 things my balljoins and my chopy tires. "very light chop" i thew the tires on the back and replace my ball joints and it was gone.

hope that helps bud

 

Thanks. I looked at the ball joints and didn't see any problems. I had just had a friend of mine that works at a toyota service technician training facility do a thorough alignment for me so that everything should be perfect as far as that goes.

So I did a search on my tires (Bridgestone Potenza S-03 Pole Position) and found someone that commented that they have unusually stiff sidewalls and are prone to tramlining. I also noticed that my winter tires have a high load rating (94) than the stock tires (91) and figured that that also might cause them to have stiff sidwalls that also might contribute to tramlining

Even though I found it hard to believe that my problems could all be related to tires I decided to get on tirerack and look for tires that didn't have just a bunch of straight lines for a tread pattern (which is supposed to enhance tramlining), and for a load rating that matched the stock rating of 91 (which did knock out a couple of contenders). I actually decided to get a set of all-season tires. They're Continental Extreme Contact DWS. They're relatively new and don't yet have survey results but they got a good review from tireracks tests. One of the negative things that they found was a slow steering response. I thought, "Hey, if there's anything that might slow down my twitchy steering, I'm all for it!" A nice benefit of this selection would be that I would be able to leave them on year round, they're non-directional so I would be able to rotate them to the other side of the car to minimize road noise, and they're supposed to last 50,000 miles instead of 20 or 30.

I've only driven to work once, but there's no mistaking that my problem is gone!

Time will tell how much I've sacrificed in terms of performance by going to an all-season instead of summer tires. I'll also have to wait and see how they perform in the winter compared to my dedicated winter tires. Although, my winter tires had been getting extremely noisy lately so I'm kinda glad I won't have to endure them for 4 months!

I hope my experience might help someone else with this problem. The Bridgestones were great on perfect roads, but as soon as I encountered rough or uneven roads there were horrible - very jekyll and hyde ...

 

... just as a follow-up. These tires have been awesome! I've had them for 9 months now and without a doubt they have been the best (luckiest) decision I've made. They fixed the steering problem, they're quiet, responsive, and they were great in the snow. (we had 82 inches this past winter )

Oh well, I just thought I'd post a follow-up.

 

I was going to ask this same question. I especially notice it when changing lanes. I guess it is just part of driving such a beast!!!!

Thanks for the great info.

 

Scotchee- thanks for the most excellent follow up. very often people don't post a follow up good or bad. this will definitely help people in the future.