I have a 2006 Ford Freestyle, I am having vibration in the steering wheel.
Just had new tires, alignment, front rotors and pads put on. The vibration is still there. Would it be a stabilzer bar, struts or something else.
Thanks
Could still be a warped rotor. I’ve seen cheap white-box rotors warp in a matter of days, particularly if it’s been raining.
yes, it is stabilizer bar, struts, or something else.
Did the alignment shop check the front suspension parts when they did the alignment? Have the tires been balanced? Did a reputable shop do the work? with a good alignment rack? Or just someone with a tape measure?
Make sure the surface of the hub that mates with the rotor is wire-brushed clean, and the lug nuts are correctly torqued.
The brake shop could have warped the rotor by improperly tightening the wheels. If they used a circular pattern instead of a cross-star pattern that in itself could have warped a brake rotor.
The shop will deny doing this and blame the “cheap” rotor. Either way, I’d say a warped rotor is 90% certain to be your problem. Take it back and argue with the shop.
If the vibration only occurs when braking, my first guess would be a warped brake rotor (disk) or the lug nuts were not tightened evenly or somehow mis-aligned. The lug nuts usually have a conical shape which forces the wheel into the correct position, but sometimes that doesn’t all work, esp if they aren’t tightened up in three rounds.
If I had this problem I remove each of the wheels one at a time, and if nothing obviously wrong at that point, I’d re-install the wheels on the hub again. This time by following the correct torque tightening sequence, three rounds of tightening, in the correct star pattern, using a hand-held torque wrench. Moving the wheels around to different parts of the car can be diagnostic too, on problems like this.
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I had exactly the same issue after having tires installed by some shop: vibration was noticeable during driving, pronounced when braking. Re-tightening completely cured the problem, so I guess technician did not care about torquing pattern at all. Since that time, every time I go for tire rotation or balance: I routinely remove and install tires myself.
Here we go again . . .
There’s a fair percentage of people that seem to believe warped rotors are ONLY caused by mechanics overtightening lug nuts or some other mistake related to tightening the lugnuts . . . such as not following the correct sequence
That is not and has never been my opinion. Meaning I don’t think that’s the only reason.
Sure, that is sometimes the reason
But rotors also warp due to no fault whatsoever of the mechanic who worked on it last
I would say if THESE rotors are warped, it’s probably not because of lug nut overtightening