Click and Clack,

I have a 2007 Chrysler Town and Country.
I have a quite noticeable vibration in the front end when I drive that appears between 50 and 60 mph. I feel it through the steering wheel and pedals, but more through the wheel. Because it's only that 10 mph range, I can't tell if it speeds up or slows down with the speed of the vehicle. It exists outside that range but it's very subtle, and sometimes in that range it will almost go away or feel stronger. I think I feel it more when under load (ie...accelerating uphill).

Tires on the front end are new-ish and look fine to a visual examination. Lug nuts are tight.

My only ideas are unbalanced wheel/tire or CV Joint. Any other ideas?

I usually have to have an idea before I head over to the Mexican mechanic so I can familiarize myself with the vocabulary I need to describe the problem, as often it's not in my everyday vernacular.

Could also be caused by;

Wheel bearing nearing complete failure.

Tire has become unbalanced.

Tire has damage, delamination, bubble, possibly not visible from the outside.

Metal wheel is bent, warped or dinged.

Wheel nuts are loose.

Damage, worn or bent suspension components.

Rubber bushings, worn MacPherson strut in suspension (aka shock absorber, or dampener)

CV joint seems less likely for the described symptoms, but still possible.

Thanks for the suggestions.

I jacked up the wheels and gave them a good shake and didn't detect any looseness in the bearings, but I'll have the mechanic double check.

I did recently get a new tire installed so I guess it's possible that it has some sort of defect. How do you detect tire damage or defect not visible from outside? The front tires are slightly different age, as I purchased a pair 6 months ago, and then about 4 months later, I picked up a piece of metal too close to the sidewall to patch, so I bought an identical tire and put it on. The age difference definitely shouldn't cause this type of vibration though.

Wheels should be ok. Aluminum alloys with no sign of damage other than normal wear and tear.

I'll have him check the suspension components. I know I need new sway bar bushings and end links (bad roads here wear them out) but I don't think they're so terrible that they would cause this type of vibration, especially in a fixed speed range.

As mentioned in original post, lug nuts were checked and are nice and tight.

I don't think the struts are the problem as I just replaced the struts six months ago due to one being broken at the top where they mount to the chassis. Perhaps if there's a loose bolt from that job.

Thanks again for all the suggestions. Several there I hadn't considered yet. Part of the problem is that I have no idea when it started, because here in the city, I literally NEVER get above 45mph, so I wouldn't have ever felt it. We took a little road trip down to the beach this weekend and it was freaking me out a little bit the whole way there and back.

Plan of action:

I need new tires on the back anyway, so I'm going to get new tires and then have those wheels and tires rotated to the front. if the vibration goes away or moves to the rear, I'll know it's a wheel, tire, or balance problem.

If it continues, we can move on to the more expensive options like suspension, bearings and axles.

Probably a good thing to get all the wheels aligned. If that works, then it was a cheap fix. If that didn't work, everything else is going to be more expensive.

Some of the other possible hypotheses, like a tire being unbalanced, are easy for a tire shop to check.

Another possible hypothesis is that something is messed up with your steering system (see, e.g., this thread about various power steering problems).

Sometimes the 'more expensive options', if not attended to, will cause wear on other components..

For example, a strut that no longer dampens vertical oscillations will cause tire tread to wear unevenly and wear more rapidly, causing the new tire to become unbalanced and wear even more unevenly. Some of those items may not by themselves be noticeable when driving, yet will undermine the longevity of the other items.

Slop or wobble in the steering or suspension parts can also aggravate tire wear, or other suspension parts.

You mentioned the roads being harsh. That suggests increased likelihood that more than one aspect could be suffering from wear.

An experienced tire tech may be able to tell using the balancer machine (small variations in tread height, side to side weave or sidewall uneveness as the tire rotates) or tire(s) may need to unmount the tire to inspect inside.

Yeah, I'm definitely not going to sit on it. I was going to check the new tires for like a couple days and then move on to other components later this week if no change. Car work is opposite of the US here. Labor is cheap and parts are more expensive. I can have them work on it all day for $40 or $50 (which is like half an hour of labor in the US). That's why I'm starting with the tires because that's something I have to do anyway and I don't have to spend hardly any money that wasn't already budgeted since the labor is negligible.

If it were a wheel bearing going bad, you would hear it long before you would feel it. Bad wheel bearings have a very specific noise they make, and you usually can't even feel it. If it's a wheel bearing and you can feel it, you're about to lose a wheel.

My vote is for a bad tire or an out-of-balance tire, with a side bet on some kind of front-end joint or connector problem. Also possible that you drove over a rock or a curb and dented a wheel rim.

Outside chance that it's a warped brake disc combined with a sticky brake caliper (latter can cause the former), but I'd think that you'd notice it more significantly at a much lower speed and that you'd notice it more specifically while braking rather than accelerating.

And as DWallach said, check the alignment. Wobbly steering is specifically what alignment is supposed to fix.

And make sure to call us back for Stump the Chumps. We want to know the outcome. :-)

Don't discount that the strut may be at fault, even tho it be new. There are some truly crappy replacement parts out there (most aftermarket stuff, I've found) that mechanics love to install because all they look at is price.

Yeah, and often we don't have the same options available to us here, although you can get pretty much anything if you're willing to import it from the US.

Will do. I'm hoping it won't stretch on very long. I'm in the process of renewing my visa too, so that's taking more time than I'd like it to (every trip to Migración for a minor thing takes half a day. Ugh.)

By the way, if you have find yourself traveling or relocating to a latin american country, I've found this dictionary quite helpful.

Small aside (and I'm not a car guy) - if you replaced a single tire, you could have thrown things askew. They tend to wear alongside, so a new and an old won't necessarily match or mesh...

-jk

Yeah, normally I wouldn't, but there was only about 4000 miles on the tire, so there's not that much difference between the two, and I replaced it with the identical brand and model of tire, so I'm quite certain that that's not the cause of a vibration this strong, unless I bought a defective tire.

Progress note: I did buy the new tires and have then rotated to the front, but in Guadalajara, there aren't any roads where I can get up to 50+ mph, so I'm having to wait until I can get out of the city to test. The guy who changed the tire thinks I have a broken motor mount, so that could also be the cause of the vibration for sure. I'm going to try to test before I replace the motor mount so I can figure out for sure.

Hm. Broken motor mount. Hm.... Looking back at your original post...



Could be!