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Thinking its a wheel/tire problem

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Old 03-21-2007, 11:04 AM
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Default Thinking its a wheel/tire problem

My car isn't handling as well as it used to

Symptoms:
Steering wheel has pretty good shake that increases with speed noticable from 35 up-car kind of wobbly
Steering is really loose car feels like it just floats from side to side when I'm driving-hard to keep it on road at 80-90mph range
the other day I made a sharp left trun and front right tire made a pretty weird noise...had radio up didn't hear it well enough to describe

Do you think a wheel could be loose? needs to be balanced? what should I check and in what order? I'll describe anything else to the best of my abilities just ask....let me know what I should do...want to fix it before I wreck or something gets worse and costs me more money than it would now

BTW the car I'm talking about is my 93 T/A A4 and not sure what section to post this
Old 03-21-2007, 11:51 AM
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have them balanced and check the air in them
Old 03-21-2007, 03:30 PM
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dumb question - have you checked the lug nuts? Kid at the local tire place once finger-tightened my front passenger wheel without torque-ing and my car handled the exact way you described...
Old 03-21-2007, 03:59 PM
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I would recomend you have your car inspected for either loose wheels, damaged tire rod ends, damaged wheel bearings etc... Take it to a local shop and have them check the suspension throughly as well as the balancing on the wheels.
Old 03-22-2007, 10:12 AM
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Do I have to jack the car up to tighten the lugnuts? Can i tighten them too much or break anything with the factory tool? im about 200lbs pretty strong..... Tire pressure passes my push test and visual but I'll check pressure tonight...Let me know if I can just try and tighten them up on the ground.....I've had 2 flats in the last year...changed/plugged myself....never balanced the tires since I've owned it...on its second set 40k miles on car...last tire change was in -20 degrees wind chill in my driveway...hurried cause I was late for work...all the other cars at my house were taken...Somebody let the air out.....took the tire off and filled it and it never leaked....sorry for the ramble....basically I need to know "how to tighten my lugnuts" as dumb as that sounds..I think I could probably leave it on the ground and just try and tighten them as hard as I can but if someone has broken one like this let me know before I do it too...thanks
Old 03-22-2007, 10:13 AM
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If that doesn't fix it I'll get a friend to balance them...I think he can do this wheel/tire size with his old school machine in his garage.
Old 03-23-2007, 09:05 PM
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if you can find a torque wrench that would be best then tightening them with all of your power you could mess something up, you really dont have to jack it up to tighten them but it wouldnt hurt to take them off make sure theyre on there ok and put them back on, like i said make sure you torque them to 100ft/lbs




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