2008 ARMADA Road Shimmy

[JFG]

I just purchased my first Nissan, a 2008 ARMADA SE (2-wheel drive). This vehicle was a demo with 6000 miles on it and was very clean.

It had a shimmy in the steering wheel at highway speeds, so the dealership went ahead and balanced the tires and also completed an alignment. I assume the dealership only test drives a very short distance, as it had the same anomaly again when I picked up the vehicle.

After taking the service manager for a ride, they again balanced the tires and found one out of balance.

Again today it seems to do this on several areas of highway, not all the time, but my other vehicles do not encounter this on the same highways. Its at speeds of 70-80-mph

-Could this be a tire issue? - Any other ideas?

Thanks in advance,

John~

[Timmbo]

Sorry I didn't get to your message sooner! First off, welcome to NICOclub! We are thrilled to have you as a part of the Armada / QX56 forum!

Have your dealer (or take it to another dealer if you don't feel you are receiving proper customer service) check the alignment. Also, it is a bit funny that they balanced the tires twice, if they balanced them correctly the first time, there is no way they would have needed to be balanced the second time, just sounds a bit goofy to me.

[JFG]

No problem, thanks for giving me your feedback.

If you think thats funny, their third attempt yesterday was to send it to a local shop and have them balance it again. (That makes 3 balances in 2 weeks) The service manager thought perhaps they did it wrong or their Hunter was out of ballance????

Anyway, its still doing it on certain areas of roadyaw and it obvious that the dealership is just advising this is normal even though another ARMADA they gave me as a loaner didnt do it, nor did my wifes Landrover, or my previous 100,000 mile Chevy Avalanche on the same roadway!

I guess I just expected more.....

Best,

John~

[Timmbo]

I would totally take it to another Nissan dealer, that is BS! Mine as smooth a G35 at highway speeds, you should not have a shimmy!!!!

[JFG]

Thats a great suggestion, I didnt think i could go to another dealer. I assume this would be out of pocket, or would this still be a covered item, even though I take it to a different dealer?

[Timmbo]

YES!!! You can go to ANY Nissan dealer and have your vehicle serviced under warranty!

[JFG]

Thanks, I'll keep you posted!

[pm_page6776]

If they keep finding the same tire out of balance, i would have them break the tire down and check for fix-a-flat in the tire. It's nasty stuff and can cause balance issues. Also have them check radial force variation (road force).

[LibJunkie]

Well me and the wife picked up our 08 Se 4x2 in Nashville Tn in sept 07 and we had nearly the same experience. Ours was even taken out to the nissan plant outside of nashville for an engineer to find the issue. they eventually replaced one rim and we have not really had the same problem since. although we are reluctant to rebalance them now as we have not experienced the problem. We now have 22,000 miles on ours now. Hope this helps.