Pendleton

iTrader: (1)

I had a incident the other day while avoiding a dog. I ended up completely hoping a 4" curb, with front and rear tires, going about maybe 10-15 MPH by the time I hit. Somehow I hit squarely perpendicular to the curb with my wheels straight and ended up parked in the grass, almost as if I meant to park there. There wasn't much damage other than scraping the frame under the seats up pretty good as they dragged across the curb, and somehow I dented my rocker a little bit (not sure how).

But now I have a slight random shimmy that I can feel through the seat, nothing through the steering wheel. So I'm thinking it's something in the rear. When I say random, it's really random. Any speed, any gear. Clutch in, clutch out. It occilates at the same frequency no matter what speed I'm going. It might last 3 seconds, it might last 10. But it's not constant. I think it might be exacerbated by bumps, but I'm not sure because I've felt it on very smooth roads. To best describe the feeling, hold your arms out to the side and tighten every muscle. Feel how they start to shake just a bit? That's kind of how it is.

I've visually inspected everything and it looks good and feels tight. There are no impact marks on the diff or any of the suspension parts. All of the bushings and mounts look good and are tight. Would worn endlinks cause such a problem. I'm still on the factory ones and they're not exactly the tightest. I can grab the swaybar end and push it around pretty easily (I'm talking on the rear). Would being out of alignment cause that kind of shimmy? The car tracks straight and corners correctly, but I suppose it's not out of the question given the hit the wheels took.

Oh and it's not the wheels or tires, I swapped from my daily wheels, which took the hit, to my Auto-X wheels/tires and the shimmy is still there.

Any other ideas would be appreciated.

godesshunter

Worn end links will give you a popping noise over bumps but not any kind of vibration. You need to concentrate your attention to rotating items.

Seeing as you eliminated the wheels and tires (my first guess) I suggest looking into the wheel bearing.

Here a good, seldom known trick fro checking wheel bearings. jack up the rear of the car. Transmission in neutral. place one hand on coil spring directly and use other hand to rotate tire. If the bearing is bad, You will feel slight reverberating vibration through the spring with you hand that is on it. The trick works better with strut-type suspension but can still be felt with wishbone type.

Often times you can use this method to detect bad wheel bearing even before they get to the point of being loud.

Pendleton

iTrader: (1)

Thanks, I'll check that out tomorrow.