shakey Spider

[Pottree@domain.elided]

In a message dated 5/15/2002 7:49:54 PM Pacific Daylight Time, 
owner-alfa-digest@domain.elided writes:


>  I noticed the car starts to feel loose, with a
> > slight shake/shimmy
> > that is really noticeable at about 60 mph. I think
> > the problem is going to
> > be on the rear - I didn't feel any vibrations
> > through the steering wheel.
> 
> Start with the cheap stuff: rotate your tires, moving
> front to back and back to front.  If the shimmy moves
> to the front, you've isolated the problem to the
> wheel/tire combo, and it's most likely a missing wheel
> weight.  If that's the problem (or part of it), most
> tire shops will balance your wheels for you -- the
> Sears where I just bought new tires for my Spider
> charged $9.99 a corner.  (I give it 20 minutes before
> somebody says I was ripped off... :-)
> 
I won't get into the rates charged, but I would also first suspect an 
unbalanced wheel and check for that.  In my experience, a slightly 
misbalanced wheel causes vibration in a range of about 5 or 10 mph.  If this 
is it, in the short term it's annoying, in the longer term it will ruin your 
tires.

Charlie
LA, CA, USA
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