Help on dreaded hake/shimmy..long

[Jazzman]

Just a quick background felow forumers. Over two years ago I had the steering shimmy on my '90 chipped 535i. Following the suggestions from the forum and Bruno's site for help, I installed new Lemforder thrust arms with 750bushings from BMA. Torqued down the bolts on the ground and loaded as suggested. This solved the shake problem.
Back to today. The shake and shimmy is back :( . Since the thrust arms are relatively new I decided to just get the bushings. But this time I bought the M5 bushings. I removed the thrust arms (they are in great condition still), pressed out the old bushings and pressed in the M5 bushings. Torqued them down to 94ft-lbs on the ground and loaded and went out for a test drive. The damn shimmy is still there, and more pronounced :( . The shake starts at exactly 55 mph up to 65 mph, and I have to apply the brake lightly to lessen the shake. What is wrong and what else can I do? Will a front wheel alignment cure it? What about the struts? Please help, this shimmy is driving me crazy, and I don't want to give up the car since it runs great after my topside rebuild three years ago.

[gtopaul]

Still sounds like something in the front end is worn. Could be idler arm, tie rod ends, center link, but hopefully you checked all that out when you did the thrust arm bushings. Don't have a front wheel bent do ya and the tires are balanced?

Paul

[BillionPa]

.... try alignment/balancing first, if that doesnt do it its probably the wheel bearings.

[Claude]

.... try alignment/balancing first, if that doesnt do it its probably the wheel bearings.

Can really a wheel bearing be the cause of such vibrations ?

I once experienced vibration like that that was due to a sticking caliper piston on one wheel (sticking on the left wheel giving vibration on the right wheel... reconditioned caliper solve the problem)

[Fahad]

just solved my 50-60 vibration after a long fight

changing upper arms and tie rods.. reduced the vibration
after few days it got bad again
4 new tyres didn't do any good.
balanced the wheels few times...no improvment.
changed lower arms..no help
changed all brake pads and disks..did not work
swaped wheels from another e34 and test drove..did not work either.
finally balanced the front hubs in a turning shop and that solved the problem..
now i know the upper arms and front hubs were causing the 50-60 vibration.

if you did not change your wheel bearings for long, you might need to change them.
ofcourse check your tyres first
good luck

[Ross]

Look to tie rods, ball joints, idler etc. Braking typically exagerates bushing problems.

[Claude]

just solved my 50-60 vibration after a long fight

changing upper arms and tie rods.. reduced the vibration
after few days it got bad again
4 new tyres didn't do any good.
balanced the wheels few times...no improvment.
changed lower arms..no help
changed all brake pads and disks..did not work
swaped wheels from another e34 and test drove..did not work either.
finally balanced the front hubs in a turning shop and that solved the problem..
now i know the upper arms and front hubs were causing the 50-60 vibration.

if you did not change your wheel bearings for long, you might need to change them.
ofcourse check your tyres first
good luck

Sound rather strange for me ! If i well understand, you say that the vibration source was your wheel bearing assembly (a seal part) and instead of replacing the whole assembly you bring it to a machine shop and they were able to rebalance it ?

[grave77]

you should check the center tie rod, I had this problem on my 850, it was the center tie rod. btw, the the L&R tie rods cause it too and they are bolted on the center tie rod. so check them all. this should cure it for sure.

[Fahad]

Sound rather strange for me ! If i well understand, you say that the vibration source was your wheel bearing assembly (a seal part) and instead of replacing the whole assembly you bring it to a machine shop and they were able to rebalance it ?

maybe i didn't explain well
my english does not help some times

wheel bearings are attached to hubs in E34s if im not mistaken
my mechanic suggested rebalancing the hubs just to make sure they are the cause of the vibration problem before i buy new wheel bearing assembly and throw more money to solve the problem.

the shop rebalanced the front hubs (for 18$) and that solved my 50-60 vibration

[shrike071]

Rebalanced the front hubs... Hrmmm... AFAIK, the only way to do that is to actually remove or add metal to the housing and I have never, ever heard of this being done.

But, if it did the trick.....