Steering wheel vibrates sometimes

My steering wheel vibrates on high speed around 65-70 mph sometimes.

However, it could vibrate today but might not as much tomorrow when no action had done on the car.



The tires had been checked for balance and rotated.

Both my front and back brakes pads and rotars are brand new.

The car was aligned around 20k miles ago.

(around last October, now is July)



Is my alignment off again?



thank you



How old are the tires, how many miles? How many miles between rotations?

How many miles on the Forester? Are these the original tires, if not were all 4 tires replaced at one time?

Ed B.

the tires are around 4 years old. they are 60K miles tires, right now have around 40K on them.
I rotate my tires every 2 oil changes.
The car right now has 121k miles on it. The tires is not the original tires.

The tires were replaced at one time, however, I got a flat tire once, and replaced it with a same tire.

thank you

Do you by any chance drive through mud from time to time? Mud, snow, ice, etc can get stuck on the backside of the wheel, which imbalances them.

hm…I live in New England, so definitely drive through some pretty heavy snow and ice,and of course in order to drive through ice, which involved sand.

Do you think I need to get my rim cleaned?

Mud stuck to the inside of the rims is an excellent theory which will cause a vibration. Your tires could be starting to show their age also. There could be a slight structural defect in one of the tires causing a vibration. I doubt your alignment has anything to do with this, unless you recently did something awful to your car to knock the alignment off, like smacking it into a curb or something like that. Alignment will not cause a vibration unless it is accompanied by worn chassis parts, in which case the alignment can exacerbate the symptoms of the worn parts.

Maybe. Turn your wheels all the way to the left and look at the backside of 'em. See if they have crud in there. If they do, get the garden hose and rinse it off. Then turn 'em to the right and repeat. I’m not saying this is definitely the cause of your problems, but I’ve had some pretty extreme balance issues just from getting snow stuck up in the wheel.

Rotate your tires front to rear. If the problem disappears or moves, it’s probably related to the tires. If it doesn’t, it’s probably something else.