50-60 MPH Shake & Shimmy: Check Tires First!

[artguy]

If you have the tell-tale shake and shimmy when you drive around 50-60 MPH, then you have probably searched and read that the likely culprit is your upper control or thrust arms.

This is absolutely true, but before you pull the trigger and buy replacements...check your tires!

I was all set to order Lemforder arms with M5 bushings but decided to have my snow tires mounted on my rims first. The next day I hit the highway with the "snows" and absolutely NO shake or shimmy. :D

The summer tires were on the car when I bought it. They didn't look as bad as they actually were.

So before you buy new arms, have a quality, trusted tire place check your tires for anything abnormal and have them rebalanced.

BMW does NOT recommend rotating your tires. But temporarily switching the front and back tires can be a poor man's test to see if your shake and shimmy is the fault of your front tires or not.

[timandbim]

amen- i experienced the 100k shakes the day i put my snows on - lucky me 2+2=4 but if it weren't for the timing of it i wouldn't have thought tires - in my case it was the rears.

[shogun]

And remove the rust between wheel and hub at their contact surfaces completely, that is also very important.

[winfred]

the shimmy is always a imbalance, when it manifests itself depends on how worn the suspension is, the design of the suspension is flawed and prone to be upset and how resistant it is to shimmying depends on pretty much everything being tight and the wheels balanced, heavy aftermarket rims will magnify any problem too, e38 and e39 are not much better, a e39 will tear it's front suspension apart it'll shimmy so bad, seen it happen when a owner doesn't give a ****

[Ross]

Good advice. Th same also goes for suspected bearing noise. Tires that are worn funky or have gotten very hard due to age often sound like a bearing growling.