Wheel Wobble Confusion

Hi all,
I'm new to your forum.
I own a Jimny 2004. A nice car and I'm quite impressed with it's off road ability too!
I've done nothing extreme tbh because its to nice but no doubt I'll succumb

I've one confusing problem I'm hoping someone can help with.

When I bought it I notice a wheel wobble at around 45mph.
I balanced the wheels .. still there in fact it was worse.
Several balances later I booked it in.
They checked it out and could find no problem, so .... they balanced the wheels again!

When I collected the car and after some pumping for info I was told that Suzuki were having problems with the 3 spoke alloys (casting problems).
I spoke to another dealer who confirmed that also.

So, I bought some steel wheels off ebay ..... put them straight on and found only a slight wobble at about the same speed.
To cut a long long story short ... I just had them balanced (several times) and it's worse again!!!
Between 40-50mph .......... Arrrgh!!

Now the Suzuki garage I asked to check out this wobble said all was fine.
Surely it can't be?

The car had only 8500 on the clock when I bought it, it's just gone to 14000, so it's done very little work. I've had a good pull at the wheel but can't feel anything at all in king pin or bearings.

Has anyone else suffered this problem and can advise me???

Sorry for the long first post.

Cheers,
Steve.

As you have seen by the replies on Difflock there is a reasonable chance that it is Kingpin Bearings or the knuckle seals, but 14000 miles seems very low mileage to suffer this on a road car.

Where abouts in the country are you? if you are in/near Berkshire I could give a second opinion

Martin

mlines wrote:

As you have seen by the replies on Difflock there is a reasonable chance that it is Kingpin Bearings or the knuckle seals, but 14000 miles seems very low mileage to suffer this on a road car.

Where abouts in the country are you? if you are in/near Berkshire I could give a second opinion

Martin

Hi Martin,

Thanks but I'm to far away, I live in North Wales.

I did wonder if I should ask the question in 2 different forums, guessed people might go back and forth.

Well I'm beginning to think it's down to kingpin/bearings as suggested.
Even though it's only done 14000 road miles.
It did it with the Alloys after swapping wheels around and many balances, now it's doing the same with these steels .......... always between 40-50mph.

What else can it be??

Since i put on my 2' spacers on mine i get a shimmy about 60kph to 70kph and when n i accelerate past that the shake and shimmy stop completely and it settles back why is that

Hi there,

I think that it may be the case that when modifying a Jimny you will come across these things.

I also run an SJ410 and did not have any of this with that vehicle, but that may be because on that vehicle there were so many vibrations that you couldn't notice a new one!

With the Jimny, the manufacturer tolerances are so much tighter and the vehicle is a more softer vehicle from the factory that any changes will show up in it's driving characteristics.

I have recently put a post on this forum about trying to balance COLWAY Mud terrain tyres and it being impossible to get the balancing perfect.

Add wheel spacers to the equation and you are in effect making the leverage effect of the wheel on the axle that bit bigger, so you will feel things are amplified through the transmission and through to the car. Therefore something that you couldn't feel before, like your wheel wobble, has been amplified so that you can now feel it.

The problem could be as simple as a wheel and tyre balancing issue showing up or it could be wheel or kingpin bearings, all of which would have been present before but are amplified by you putting on the wheel spacers.

Martin has mentioned a few times that wheel bearings get eaten by Jimny's with wheel spacers on and it seems to be accepted by Jimny owners that this is the case. For this reason I shall be avoiding using them myself. I am aware of the stability implications but have spoken to experts such as Rhino Ray who advise that they are not strictly necessary.

Hope this long reply helps.

Kirky