Steering wheel vibration during breaking?

I replaced all 4 break pads on my 99 maxima about a year ago (ceramic pads). Recently, I noticed when I am breaking on highway to slow down, my steering wheel vibrates. It does not vibrate when I am driving, even at high speeds. At lower speeds, it is less noticeable. My car does not have ABS.

What could be the cause of this vibration? The rotor or break pads not even? How severe is this problem? Can I wait till my next maintenance (2-3 months?) to fix it?

Thanks!

Raymond

Reply to
nospam.auto
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Most likely is you have some residual drag at one front wheel that is creating excessive heat and distorting one rotor...

Try driving it down a road where you don't have to use the brakes at all...then coast to a stop using only the emergency brake, and get out and feel the temp of the front wheels...if one is signifigantly hotter than the other, you've found your troublemaker...more often than not this gets misdiagnosed as a bad caliper, when in reality the condition of the sliding surfaces and hardware are to blame..the pins and sleeves need to move very easily and independant of each other, and the caliper when mounted up and the piston retracted should glide easily back and forth on them...

Reply to
jeffcoslacker

You can't even spell "brake", so take it to a garage. Your disks (rotors) are shot.

Reply to
dingbat

sounds like warped rotors; how long it can wait depends on how severe it is.

nate

Reply to
Nate Nagel

if your 99 maxima is stock, it will have abs! and a rotor is the problem.

Reply to
187

Rotors don't just warp for no reason...all you guys telling them it's a rotor are not providing anything useful...replace it without finding the cause, and you just have another warped rotor shortly....

Reply to
jeffcoslacker

Reply to
sdlomi2

I bought it in 99 from the dealer. It is the SE, and does NOT have ABS.

(Long replies below)

Thanks everyone for the replies. I took it to a shop today. The owner and I took it out for a drive on the highway to test it out. We feel the shake in the steering wheel and the brake at 50+ mph speed (but I guess it is not too severe after talking with the owner).

The brake pads themselves are pretty new and have lots of life left, and he visually inspected the rotors and said the left front and rear have some heat marks, the right side seems better. But in general the rotors themselves looks to be in reasonable condition.

I discussed with him briefly the options and what he recommends, and asked him if this can wait till the next maintenance. He said they generally replace the rotor and the break pads at the same time, and they match the pads and the rotor (so one is not significantly harder than the other?). I get the impression that he doesn't think this is very severe, and since the pads have a long way to go, I could drive with this a bit more until the pads ware down a bit, and replace both the front rotor and pads if this gets too annoying or I feel I don't have good breaking power anymore...

The place is fairly reputable and my impression with the owner is fairly positive. Didn't try to convince me that it's a big problem and I need to replace it now, which I might have, so I left without paying anything. The place is in pretty upscale neighborhood where I work, so I got the feeling they are not that interested in resurface the existing rotor to fix it, which he said he doesn't feel the labor money is worth it.

My personal take on this is, when I replaced my break pads a year ago, I bought the pads from Kragen (their expensive ceramic pads), and just had someone replaced it, without sanding the rotors. The new pads and old rotors may have caused this warping effect to accelerate, and after about a year of use it becomes apparent. Perhaps the new pads also didn't match my rotor? (I have the original rotors and the car have 100k on it. The OEM break pads were replaced at 80k mile).

The owner said they usually put German made rotor and Japanese made ceramic break pads, and said replacing the front would be about $400+.

So my options are

- keep driving until the problem becomes too annoying, and replace the whole front set.

- find another shop that will re-surface the front rotor? Is it worth spending the money on a rotor that already have 100k mile on it?

- find a shop that will try to find the cause of the wrapped rotor? I am guessing that since there's not a lot of money being made here, many shops won't go this route. Anyone have recommendations for San Jose, CA area?

Thanks!

Raymond

Reply to
nospam.auto

I would suspect uneven torque on the front wheel lug nuts as the cause of the rotor warp and shake. If you carefully retorque the nuts with a torque wrench, you might pull it back straight or at least stop it from getting worse.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail >
Reply to
Mike Romain

Won't this cause the shaking to occur during driving as well? I don't have a torque wrench, so I might just get my tires rotated again...

Thanks.

Raymond

Reply to
nospam.auto

Not normally. The rotor material is light and relatively thin. The warp isn't noticed until the brake pad hits it.

If they really hammer them on, it can also warp the rim, then you feel it all the time.

Be warned that only 'some' shops use a real torque wrench on the wheel like they are supposed to use. They use a 'torque stick' on an impact gun instead which can have enough tolerance when old to warp rotors. If you ask nice, they might hand torque them.

Jeeps and other Chrysler rotors are bad for it. The shops I use hand finish wheels.

You can buy a torque wrench for under 30 bucks that will do the job. You just back off each nut and retighten them properly.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's Canadian Off Road Trips Photos: Non members can still view! Jan/06
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Reply to
Mike Romain

======================= The answer has been posted here before:

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Reply to
Daniel

======================= The answer has been posted here before:

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Reply to
Daniel

Another possiblity would be a dragging brake, possibly caused by unlubed sliders. Any time the caliper comes off, it should be disassembled and the sliders lubed. this should be SOP. Also could be a bad caliper. Or they could have just warped because they're undersized. I'm not familiar with the OP's vehicle so I can't comment.

nate

Mike Roma> I would suspect uneven torque on the front wheel lug nuts as the cause

Reply to
N8N

The more experience I get with this situation (and I have had FAR too much experience with it over the past few years) I become more convinced that the torqueing after tire rotation has caused me a ton of problems.

I fully endorse the need to have calipers functioning and sliding properly, and to align the discs (rotors, to most) properly, to use good pads, etc. but, as you suggest, Mike, usually when this has happened I have found it to be linked to a visit to the tire shop.

At one point, I rebuilt the brakes, machined the rotors, etc and the car went two years with nary a wobble UNTIL Discount Tire rotated my tires. Then, the rotors warped very quickly. Another casualty of torque sticks.

I bought new tires a couple of months ago, and they came at the car with a freaking impact wrench and torque stick, and I demanded they stop. Turns out they didnt even have a torque wrench in the shop, and one of the workers had to go to his car to get a manual wrench. I tightened them myself by hand and then went home and used my torque wrench to finish the job.

There are other reasons this can happen, and I am a firm believer in diagnosis of a trouble condition, but I'll be damned if I have to repeat this learning curve about torque sticks.

Reply to
<HLS

You are right, and the problem is usually limited to vehicles with cast alloy wheels, steel wheels are good enough about distributing lugnut loading that it doesn't cause problems...my own Lumina is a victim of the rotor warp syndrome whenever someone messes with the wheels at a shop...last time (new tires also) it felt like crap on the ride home and I broke out the torque wrench and guaged the torque on all before taking them off and redoing it correctly, they were anywhere from

65-120 ft/lbs...spec is 100 and yes, they used the MF'ing Torquestix on them...those things are a joke...whether they work right or not is completely subjective to line pressure, gun settings and condition, and assumes a constant supply of evenly pressured air to the gun, which we know never happens, the compressor in most shops will cycle often, and the pressure could be 80 psi as you do one wheel, compressor kicks on, and 120 after you get to the one diagonal from it as the compressor hits cut-out pressure....
Reply to
jeffcoslacker

I took Mike's advice and got a torque wrench at PepBoys for about $25.

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(M200DB). I hope it's good enough for my purpose, says +- 4% and made in Taiwan. Feels decently made. The repair manual says 72-88 ft/lbs is the proper range.

Unfortunately me going to Pepboys is like my mom going to the computer store, I forgot to buy the lug nut, so I'll make another trip today.. ;)

Now when I re-torque it, should I take off the wheel or just loose each nut and re-tighten them one by one? I don't mind taking off the wheel and put it back on if it's better...

Raymond

Reply to
nospam.auto

Just back them off enough to take the majority of the torque off of them, then retorque, working in a star pattern, back and forth...go over them at least one more time as the first ones you torque will sometimes be slightly loose after the others have been tightened.

If you wanna be real fancy, tighten in two increments, like 45 lbs then

85 on the second pass, I don't feel this is neccessary on lugnuts, though...
Reply to
jeffcoslacker

I would loosen all of them a little also and do the star pattern like the other poster mentioned. I wouldn't remove the wheel.

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail in '00 88 Cherokee 235 BFG AT's Canadian Off Road Trips Photos: Non members can still view! Jan/06
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Reply to
Mike Romain

I got all the equipment and torqued all the wheels to 80 pounds. Did the star like pattern, first round torqued all to 40, and 2nd round torqued all to 80. It was definitely tighter before, as I couldn't loosen it with the emergency wrench that came with my car. I had to use my (longer) torque wrench instead. When I correctly torque it to

80, I can still (barely) back it off with the emergency wrench.

I think it helped! Initially, I noticed when I am coasting to a stop on city street, the stopping is a bit smoother, but the differences is subtle. However, when I am driving in terrain where I need to use my breaks more frequently, the pulsing still occurs, especially when the breakpad seems to run hot. (why?)

When I drove to work today is when I really noticed the difference, I approached the exit at 80+ mph, as I slow down, the pulsing is significantly less! I still feel it a bit, but it definitely wasn't as bad as before!

Thank you guys! I would never would thought that would be the reason. I guess one more thing I need to check when someone works on my wheel. ;) What's interesting is, the places that worked on my tires, they all seem to hand torque it at the end.. so I don't know what happened...

Raymond

Reply to
nospam.auto

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