Vibration from front??

smetzger

03 P5 (x2), 09 Miata, 07 Mazda3, 13 Fit, 09 Ody
So, I have some fairly extreme vibration from the front.

- Shocks are fairly new and everything seems tight.
- Does not seem to be any sticking brake calipers

I put the car up on jack stands and ran it up to 35mph.
The left wheel rotates slower than the right wheel.

1) Is this normal?

2) Could this be caused by CV? There is a small amount of grease seeping from inner boot, but no tears.

3) Sticking caliper could be issue here, but the brakes don't get hot. Any other possible causes?
 
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Yes the faster wheel is normal. Ever do a burn out in it and most likely you'll get the one wheel peel [emoji38] maybe you lost a wheel weight and it unbalanced now or could also be engine mounts
 
I put the car up on jack stands and ran it up to 35mph.
The left wheel rotates slower than the right wheel.

1) Is this normal?

Yes. You can slowly stop one wheel and the other wheel will spin up. (unless you have an LSD differential)

2) Could this be caused by CV? There is a small amount of grease seeping from inner boot, but no tears.

Yes. A bad CV joint will rumble or vibrate the car.
A bad outer CV joint tends to "click" at slow speeds with the steering wheel cranked.


3) Any other possible causes?

Front bearings.
Take your car out on a back road and get it up to speed. Slowly weave from left to right and see if that affects the sound (it comes and goes a bit)

If the sound changes, it's almost certainly front bearings.
 
Id check by doing a tire rotation and moving the suspected wheel to the rear and try again.
 
When my front bearings went bad, the car was kinda humming /rumbling/vibrating.
The sound filled the whole cabin and I could barely tell that it was coming from the front.

I too jacked up my car and ran it at idle in 4th or fifth gear then stopped one wheel at a time to check for vibration.

That worked and I found the bad bearing.
I forget what side it was and just did both bearings.

Doing front bearings is a huge PITA for our car. Everything tends to be seized.
 
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I did both of my front wheel bearings in a few hours. There's some nice things about living in the south :)

I'd check the tires first. Out of balance tires will vibrate, and can be quite bad depending on how out of balance they are. I recently threw a weight in one of my rear tires and couldn't drive over about 45mph it was so bad... They balanced all 4 tires and rides smooth as glass now.

CV axles CAN cause a vibration, though not as common. And any kind of a driveline vibration you will USUALLY (though not necessarily 100%) but 98% of the time you'll have the vibration while you're accelerating, but if you let off the pedal and coast it will go away. The other 2% is generally when it's worn past the point and it will do it all the time.
 
I did both of my front wheel bearings in a few hours. There's some nice things about living in the south :)

That and you are/were a mechanic with the tools skills and experience to get it done.

I spent a week doing mine.
I come from the backwoods where you use a big rock if you don't have a sledgehammer.
 
That and you are/were a mechanic with the tools skills and experience to get it done.

I spent a week doing mine.
I come from the backwoods where you use a big rock if you don't have a sledgehammer.

I too have a shop and this took about 2 hours for both. I even had some rust issues. :D
 
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