I don't post here that much but I've found that this forum (and the Texas section in particular) is usually pretty knowledgeable. Here is a tough one.

My wife has a 2003 Saturn Vue V6 FWD which has a pretty bad vibration, felt mostly through the steering wheel, at between about 65-80 mph; pretty much how fast you usually want to go on the highway. Its gotten so bad that I told her to keep it under 60 because I'm afraid a wheel is going to fly off the thing and she'll flip or something. I'm usually pretty good at figuring out this kind of thing and her dad who is a really smart guy and been working on cars his whole life can't figure it out either.

If you keep the thing under 60 it drives almost like new, doesn't pull to either side, no weird noises, etc...

We have tried:
- New tires, including a couple balancings, with no luck
- New steering rack & tie rods - slight improvement (the old rack was beat up bad - pretty good amount of play) but this was obviously just a symptom.

This thing has electric power steering which seems to basically be a manual steering box with a little electric motor directly behind the steering wheel, so it is not a standard steering system.

Any ideas? I'm leaning towards trying new CV joints, even though they don't make noises going around corners like bad units usually do.... don't know what else to try. Maybe front wheel bearings but if those were bad I'd expect some noises and there aren't any. Taking it to a shop is not an option, they'll just want to replace everything in the front suspension, drivetrain and steering; not worth it on a $4000 car.

The Saturn forums are useless; there's only a couple people on there who seem to know what they're talking about and nobody seems to describe a similar problem. It was rear ended pretty bad about 3 years ago and a short time later I started to notice the vibration which has gotten worse slowly.

Thanks for any help.

 

try checking the wheel bearing in the front.

 

I would try the cv axles. I work on cars for a living and find this problem often, usually cv axles or motor/trans mounts. A bad axle doesn't have to make noise to be bad btw

 

not sure if this is even relavent but, a sway bar mount broke on my truck and i'd get really bad vibes over ~55 and when braking... also one of my 'bushings' was bad, they said when i got an alignment

 

He is correct but have you tried to just pay a shop to diagnose it?

 

found the problem.

 

what happens if you go 70mph, does the vibration get worse or better?

try taking it to a shop to diagnose the problem. firestone did a check for me one on the inspection dyno, got the car up to 60 and were able to track down the problem

 

She loves Saturns like we love our LSx's. strange but true.

 

haha really? thats cute.

ive worked on a few saturns, and i really don't like them. might just be me though. it also doesn't help that they make some of the ugliest cars out there. especially the older ones.

 

Over about 80 it gets better, if you have the guts to push through the bad area.... worst speed is around 72/73.

I think i'm going to try new CV axles.... thanks for all the responses. yall were more helpful in 1 day than the Saturn boards have been in a couple months

 

This one has an Opel narrow angle 4-cam V6 that is like a black box. Luckily we haven't had any issues with the motor itself. I did the timing belt at 100k miles and it was a pain and a half (had to unmount the engine on one side - took like 8 hours and I had to buy a special tool kit from England!). Dealer wanted $1000 to do the belt... insane.

 

do you know if its a first order vibration? or is it a faster vibration?