I have a 2011 EX35 AWD w/ 38000 miles with a shimmy/vibration (in the steering wheel and felt in front seat) that occurs at 75MPH and seems to disappear (or oscillations increase very fast) at approx. 85MPH.

This vibration began at 33,000 miles.

Things I have done but have not worked:
1. Replaced new tires w/ Michelin PS3 (Roadforced balanced) - NOT FIXED
2. Swapped tires w/ Michelin AS Premier (Roadforced balanced 2 times) - NOT FIXED
3. Rotated front wheels to back - NO CHANGE
4. Replaced front rotors and pads - NO CHANGE

What am I missing?
- Bad wheel bearing? no noise and no play in wheels
- Bad u-joints/driveshaft? no "thunks" or other strange noises
- Bad Control arm bushings? Again, no thunks and seems odd for low miles.
- Alignment? Car seems to track straight.

This shimmy is driving me MAD. PLEASE HELP.

When you replaced the tires, did you look at the wear pattern? Was it even? Sometimes the alignment can be off just enough to cause what you're experiencing but still track relatively decent. I'd try an alignment first before you dump a bunch of money into replacement parts. Also, get a close look at that U-joint. Ours failed in the Frontier with no spectacular noise. Granted, it had a lot more miles on it but it did the same thing. Good luck!

nissangirl74 wrote:When you replaced the tires, did you look at the wear pattern? Was it even? Sometimes the alignment can be off just enough to cause what you're experiencing but still track relatively decent. I'd try an alignment first before you dump a bunch of money into replacement parts. Also, get a close look at that U-joint. Ours failed in the Frontier with no spectacular noise. Granted, it had a lot more miles on it but it did the same thing. Good luck!

Discount Tire did mention they were slightly "cupped/feathered." Not sure if this indicates bad alignment.

Usually does. Did you have an alignment done after replacing the tires? (If not, you should always do this after replacing tires).
It can also be caused by bad shocks. There's no real definitive timeline for replacing shocks. Some manufacturers will say 55k or 60k miles but that doesn't mean they can't fail at 30K or 40K. Do the bounce test. Easiest and cheapest way to determine if they need to be replaced.

Does the ex35 have a compression rod bushing? I see the G35 has steering shimmy issues when the compression rod bushings go bad.

That, I don't know.

Did you check the wheels ?
I had similar issue….when I put Bridgestone snow tires and new wheels the problem is gone.
I was getting harmonics ( vibration at 120 kmh ).
I would take tires off and balance the wheels only ….you can do that.



Webby

webster wrote:Did you check the wheels ?
I had similar issue….when I put Bridgestone snow tires and new wheels the problem is gone.
I was getting harmonics ( vibration at 120 kmh ).
I would take tires off and balance the wheels only ….you can do that.



Webby

To my knowledge, Discount Tire only balanced them with the tire on (multiple times). However, I did rotate the wheels (F to R) which made no difference. I guess I could swap out each wheel with the spare to verify if the issue is in fact with the wheel.
Last year I did have some corrosion on the wheel that was leaking around the rim. I had another tire shop repair it by sealing the rim. Could this have been an issue?

Based on what you have done it indicates that it is the wheel.

The only way to find out is to take all rubber off and have the wheels checked if out of round and see if they balance without rubber on.

I know it is painful procedure but you have to proceed by process of elimination if you want cure the problem
and sounds that you do !

Good Luck,

Webby

Granted, an older post but I'm experiencing this same problem on my '08 Journey AWD. On my 2nd set of tires but have yet to try swapping out my rims...mostly because I don't have access to another set. Dealer says they rarely get take offs, which leaves me taking a giant leap of faith in buying a used/new set of rims and hoping that resolves the issue. I do like the idea of rim-only balancing; almost makes me with I needed new rubber to justify this...then again, the vibration between speeds of 75-85 is literally driving me crazy.

Tim

In experiencing same issue on my RWD EX35. Shimmy/Vibration as soon as I went with aftermarket 20x9 Verde axis wheels. Discount tire has balanced them 10 times and 2 road force balance attempts. Rotated wheels front to back with no success. Tires are brand new Yokohama Parada 255/40/r20. Discount tire tried 2 new tires to element the potential of an "out of round" tire and have tried to replace one of the wheels also with no success. Please please help. Any suggestions are welcome. The stock 19's gave me no shimmy. Could this be a speed sensitive steering issue????

Have you gone back to the 19's to rule out another issue that may have occurred ?
Do notice a slight increase in wheel circumference on the new set up, though this should have no affect.
Possible with a change in wheel size an alignmet needs to be done ?

I did try putting the 19's back on and it removed the problem. I'm going to try an alignment and replacing one
More wheel. I'll keep y'all posted. Than you so much for any and all ideas and
Input my Infiniti homies!!!

Infiniti4infiniti wrote:I did try putting the 19's back on and it removed the problem. I'm going to try an alignment and replacing one
More wheel. I'll keep y'all posted. Than you so much for any and all ideas and
Input my Infiniti homies!!!

any luck?

still no fix for my issue. May just get rid of the car.

TimGinCentralNJ wrote:Granted, an older post but I'm experiencing this same problem on my '08 Journey AWD. On my 2nd set of tires but have yet to try swapping out my rims...mostly because I don't have access to another set. Dealer says they rarely get take offs, which leaves me taking a giant leap of faith in buying a used/new set of rims and hoping that resolves the issue. I do like the idea of rim-only balancing; almost makes me with I needed new rubber to justify this...then again, the vibration between speeds of 75-85 is literally driving me crazy.

Tim

Have you had any luck fixing it, Tim?

Not yet. Since mine is very sporadic, My indy mechanic suggested the idea that either the trans mounts or motor mounts might be old and not holding one or the other in place as they should, resulting in the drive line not being fully aligned at all times...and thus causing a sporadic vibration. Will get my car into him hopefully within the next couple of weeks.

def get a road force balance at a Infiniti dealership. they have better equipment than discount tire. discount tire tried 12 times on regular dynamic balancer and 3 times on their road forece balancer and could not get it right....finally Sewell Infiniti Dallas fixed it with their equipment. ive got Verde Axis V99 20X9's and the are lug centric wheels

the problem is def the Discount Tire road force balancer is not accurate enough!!!! i had the same nightmare as you EX35..... Infiniti dealershipfixed it and did it right....cost me $100 but well worth it.

So I finally got around to getting a 4-wheel alignment. No change in shimmy/vibration. I guess next stop is another balancing, this time with the dealer's road force machine. It seems odd that discount tire, which has a road force machine which was used on my wheels, wouldn't be as good as the dealer but I'm willing to try anything to get rid of this damn vibration.

Both the Nissan dealer, which is close by, and the Infiniti dealer, which is 2 hours away, have the Hunter Roadforce Touch. Would Nissan be able to do as good a job as Infiniti? Ideally, is like to avoid the 2 hour drive, but if Nisssan can't fix my issue, I will have to.

ex35 wrote:So I finally got around to getting a 4-wheel alignment. No change in shimmy/vibration. I guess next stop is another balancing, this time with the dealer's road force machine. It seems odd that discount tire, which has a road force machine which was used on my wheels, wouldn't be as good as the dealer but I'm willing to try anything to get rid of this damn vibration.

Both the Nissan dealer, which is close by, and the Infiniti dealer, which is 2 hours away, have the Hunter Roadforce Touch. Would Nissan be able to do as good a job as Infiniti? Ideally, is like to avoid the 2 hour drive, but if Nissan can't fix my issue, I will have to.

if Nissan and Infiniti have the same tire machine I don't see why you cant go to Nissan and have them do it. It will probably cost the same (if not less) and it will save on 4+ hours of driving

I'm going to get the balancing done at the local Nissan dealer. If that doesn't fix the issue (I have a sneaking suspicion it won't), what other things should I be looking at?

At that point, if you still have the vibration (only with that set of wheels) I would look into replacing them all together. I dont know if one is out of round or slightly bent, but you have invested a lot more time and money into this than you should have.

Update. I took the car to Infiniti in San Antonio and had them balance the wheels. Their equipment must be more sensitive than discount tire since they said the balance was off a bit. They balanced all 4 wheels and I would say the shimmy was almost eliminated (maybe 75% reduction). I thought great, all fixed.

Fast forward a few weeks and the shimmy is back. The only thing that changed since I had the wheels balanced was I changed the front pads (not rotors). Is it possible this threw the balance off again? I use a snap on torque wrench and torqued each nut to 80lbs in a star pattern to make sure I didn't warp the rotors. Should I take the wheels off and rotate them on the hub so they are matted to the hub at a different location? Any other thoughts?

When they put the wheels back on they have to do it by hand also not putting weight on the wheels when re tourqing. I can't say enough about how the trim to the dealership to have them road force balance the wheels them selves. If you got your brakes done at a brake place more than likely they put they wheels back on with an impact wrench and with all the car's weight on vs. having the wheels barely kiss the ground to tighten the lugs. Believe me I was going as crazy as you if not more.

if the dealership road force helped some then you are def on the right track!!!! you have a wheel or wheels that is right on the threshold of run out thus requiring the sensitive balance and the method of remounting the wheel. I was so happy once my problem was resolved. I have since moved to a wider wheel for preformance reasons and the higher quality wheel (Jlw certified) resolved the need for road force balancing that I had to do on the Verde' wheels.

I did the brakes myself. I first tightened the wheels off the ground with an impact wrench set to low (50lbs torque). I then lowered the car completely and tightened to 80lbs with a torque wrench.

I guess I could take them off completely and then retighten with the wheels only kissing the ground to see if that makes a difference.

Infiniti4infiniti wrote:When they put the wheels back on they have to do it by hand also not putting weight on the wheels when re tourqing. I can't say enough about how the trim to the dealership to have them road force balance the wheels them selves. If you got your brakes done at a brake place more than likely they put they wheels back on with an impact wrench and with all the car's weight on vs. having the wheels barely kiss the ground to tighten the lugs. Believe me I was going as crazy as you if not more.

do not tourque the lugs with all with all the weight on the car. first put the wheel on and hand tighten you lugs. lower the car next until the wheels barely kiss the pavement ( enough to give you resistance to tourque the lugs in star patern. do you final tightening last with all the weight on the car. what this does is evenly distribute pressure to the hub. when too much weight is on the wheel when you tourque them it will skew the surface where the hub and wheel marry up.
hope this helps...
don't use and impact at all is what the guy at the delership did when I watched him. They did mine on the same lift as the alighnment machine which was nice because the tech lowered they car enough to get the wheeel on enough to hand tighnen then he dropped the entire car until all 4 tires where touching barely enough to give resistance for the star pattern tighting process by hand to 70 foot pounds then he he droped all the weight on the tires to do the final tourquing to 80 foot pounds.
I know it's 3 rounds of tighning but lug centric wheels take that even with hub rigs. watch any car show and notice they allways hand tighted every wheel on the custom shows!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

so, I remounted my wheels and torque wheels with wheels only kissing ground. Made no difference. The shimmy remains at 80 MPH. I think I may have reached the end of the rope with this car. It's been perfectly reliable for the 6 years I've had it, but the front end shimmy needs to go.

its the quality of your wheels then and the scrub radius. both a poor quality gravity cast wheel and going too far away from factory scrub radius i.e. more aggresive off set wheel. When I had Verde' 20x9 gravity cast wheels there were the ones discount tire could not balance after 16 attempts, 2 replacement tires and 2 replacement wheels and their best road force ballancer 3 three times. The infinity delership finally got it balanced but it stunk because I had to go to them for everything tire related. the 38 offset affected it too. I finally poinied up for low pressure cast JLW certified (for run out and accuracy specs,,,stock enkie wheels have that stamp right by the valve step indicating the certification. Those factors are huge. i have MRR 20x9.5 now with the same tires that were on the impossiable to balance shimming causing wheels. you get what you pay for on wheels is the hard lesson I learned....not the car's fault....BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAW I WAS AS FRUSTRATED IF NOT MORE SO THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I have stock wheels. I never had an issue until 33,000 miles.

Infiniti4infiniti wrote:its the quality of your wheels then and the scrub radius. both a poor quality gravity cast wheel and going too far away from factory scrub radius i.e. more aggresive off set wheel. When I had Verde' 20x9 gravity cast wheels there were the ones discount tire could not balance after 16 attempts, 2 replacement tires and 2 replacement wheels and their best road force ballancer 3 three times. The infinity delership finally got it balanced but it stunk because I had to go to them for everything tire related. the 38 offset affected it too. I finally poinied up for low pressure cast JLW certified (for run out and accuracy specs,,,stock enkie wheels have that stamp right by the valve step indicating the certification. Those factors are huge. i have MRR 20x9.5 now with the same tires that were on the impossiable to balance shimming causing wheels. you get what you pay for on wheels is the hard lesson I learned....not the car's fault....BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAW I WAS AS FRUSTRATED IF NOT MORE SO THAN YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!