Hi all
I’d appreciate any suggestions about this. I have a Hyundai Sonata 2005, 4 cylinder manual. It’s done almost 94000 miles which means there’s about 6000 left on the extended warranty.
It has an intermittent vibration problem that is related to road speed / wheel rotation. It’s not related to engine speed. I’m driving along and things are good until it starts. It’s slight at first but progressively gets worse over the next minute or so. It’s an up and down vibration. If I didn’t know I’d swear that one of the wheels is not round or the road is very corrugated. It gets so bad that I pull over and stop. It doesn’t feel safe and I fear doing some damage. If I wait a minute and move off again then it has usually gone until next time. When it’s at its worst when I’m stopping I can feel the vibration in the brake petal and I think the car is going up and down slightly for each wheel rotation. It’s hard to tell if it’s coming from the front or back. I don’t know if it’s related but sometimes I hear a single “clonk” noise coming from the back as I start off slowly. It hasn’t happened often enough to be sure but I get the feeling that if I hear that then there is a greater chance of the vibration problem happening somewhere at speed during that trip.
I have taken it to the dealer. They did a brake job on it a few weeks ago. I think they did an okay job. The brakes are working fine now where there was vibration in the pedal and the steering during braking before. This other problem was happening before the brakes got bad so I don’t think it’s related although it was hard to tell earlier because, while braking at least, because it was difficult to separate the brake vibration with the other problem.
The dealer now tells me that tires are the problem. They were wearing slightly unevenly or something. However, I don’t think they have really experienced the bad problem. When driving along “normally” there is a little bit of unevenness in the road noise and feel. I think that is what they have noticed and think that is what I am talking about but it’s NOTHING compared to the bigger problem when it occurs. Could a tire cause a problem that gets really bad and goes away again? I doubt it but I’m no expert.
I’m thinking of taking it to a local repair place who have done work for me on another car and have a pretty good reputation. I’ll have to pay them to try to find out what it is and then if it’s something that the warranty covers I’ll take it back to the dealer. I don’t know what else to do. I’d really like to catch it before it’s too late if the warranty would cover it which it should if it not normal wear and tear.
Thanks for any ideas …