I recently purchased a 2004 Hyndai Accent with 65,000 miles on it. It runs great and the body and interior are in excellent condition, but after purchasing the vehicle I noticed a shimmy in the steering wheel that starts up consistently around 20 mph and then goes away around 45 mph. Upon further inspection I discovered inside-edge tire wear on both front tires (more-so on the passenger side), what is called camber wear, I think. To my knowledge, there is no camber adjustment that can be made on this vehicle when doing an alignment. My first question is “are the two problems related, either directly or indirectly?” Secondly, what could be causing these problems? And finally, what would be a good approach (step-by-step) process to solving the problems that doesn’t cost me an arm and a leg? Any and all ideas would be appreciated.
Thanks,
davefromsandiego
Do two things. Get new tires, and get an alignment done. Just getting new tires won’t correct the alignment, and the new tires will very likely start to wear incorrectly very soon. Just getting an alignment done without new tires won’t cure the shaking…the damage is already done to the tires, and they will not roll smoothly as they should again.
Tire wear on the inside like that can be too much negative camber, or it could be caused by a little bit of toe-out. Camber indicates how far off vertical the tires are, and toe-out is when the tires are aimed slightly outward…in other words the right front tire would be pointing slightly to the right, and the left front would be pointing slightly to the left, sorta like if you walked with your feet pointing slightly outward instead of straight ahead.