2008 Ford Focus Estate 1.8 TDCI Titanium - Steering Wheel Vibration

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Sun 11 Jan 2015 18:36
2008 Ford Focus Estate 1.8 TDCI Titanium - Steering Wheel Vibration - Knight150

I'm getting vibration through the steering wheel when over 70 mph, seems to be less if Im accelrating but say i take my foot off the accelarator to coast down from 76 to 70 it seems worse, or if keeping a constant speed. This seems intermittant and can happen between 70 and 90 (havent taken it higher) with 85 being particulary suseptable. I have had the cr at the Garage twice and had the re-balance and tracking done by kwick fit as well.

Any ideas, taking the car back to garage again in Wednesday and would like to point them in directions to look, they say they are going to put it on a hunter machine to check the camber but I'm not so sure.

Hellllllpppppp

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Mon 12 Jan 2015 12:07
2008 Ford Focus Estate 1.8 TDCI Titanium - Steering Wheel Vibration - Peter.N.

Probably 99% of vibration problems are down to wheel balance, if its intermittent its generally because both wheels are slightly out of balance and as they change position because of different wheel speeds when cornering, the balancing error goes in or out of phase so it either adds, then you can feel it, or cancels, then you can't

Try swapping the front and rear wheels.

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Mon 12 Jan 2015 16:48
2008 Ford Focus Estate 1.8 TDCI Titanium - Steering Wheel Vibration - Knight150

Thanks for the response : )

Wheels have been swapped off another car by the dealer then rebalanced and re- aligned, it's intermittant in that it comes in and out between 70 and 90 but always happens at around 70 and 85, intermittant inbetween those speeds, car does it on long straight motorway drives, seems to happen less when accelerating than coasting or driving at a steady speed, definantly more pronounced when coasting down to 70 from 75.

Not sure its the wheels (rebalanced by 2 different garages and wheels swapped from another car) unless camber can cause vibration ? (thats what they are testing for tomorrow)

Edited by Knight150 on 12/01/2015 at 16:48

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Mon 12 Jan 2015 21:24
2008 Ford Focus Estate 1.8 TDCI Titanium - Steering Wheel Vibration - chris.o
Might be worth checking the driveshafts, especially the inner joints. I think they will be "tripod" style. If one of the tripods wear, they can make the driveshaft run off centre. This causes vibration. A quick on vehicle inspection should identify if they are worn.

Chris.
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Mon 12 Jan 2015 21:48
2008 Ford Focus Estate 1.8 TDCI Titanium - Steering Wheel Vibration - Peter.N.

I would agree with Chris, the only time I have had this problem and it wasn't the tyres it was the inner driveshaft joints, it was on a citroen CX but it had done about 250k miles and much more noticable on a long run when really hot, I suspect it was the grease loosing viscosity.

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