Steering wheel judder on the motorway

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Soldato
Joined
26 Jan 2005
Posts
7,975
Hi all,

Been battling a problem with my Audi TT (2008) for a while now.

Essentially, on the motorway at 70-80mph the steering wheel judders more than it should considering road surface etc. You feel like you have to keep two hands on the wheel to quell the judder.
It doesn't occur if you are taking a bend in the road, only in straight lines if that's of any use?

I first thought that this would be down to wheel balancing and/or alignment, so I got that done. Problem still persisted.

I then took it to an Audi specialist, and they reckoned it could be the inner NS joint on the driveshaft as there was some wear and 'play', and judder is a indication of this also at high speed. Got this done and the problem persisted.

Is it a steering column issue or something like that? I'm at a loss as to what it could be!
I'd prefer not to throw too much more cash at the problem either.

Any help would be great!

:(
 
Checked your alloys? Had the same thing happen to me once and one was very slightly buckled, didn't lose air but at higher speeds it shook.
 
How good/reputable are the place you got it balanced? What tyres are fitted, decent ones or cheap chinese crap?

If a wheel has a slight buckle, it can be very hard to balance out. Try swapping front wheels to back, a slight misbalance can often be small enough to not be noticeable on the back.
 
Sorry I've skimped on the tyre detail it seems!

I replaced them all last year. Michelin Primacy 3's.
ATS euromaster did the wheel balancing/alignment checks and corrections. Seemed pretty reputable?

I would be surprised if both those guys and the audi specialist missed out on a buckled alloy, if that was the case?

Thanks all for the responses so far :)
 
Gaspanic said:
Checked your alloys? Had the same thing happen to me once and one was very slightly buckled, didn't lose air but at higher speeds it shook.
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Buckled alloy would be my quick guess. I had two and no-one noticed until I had the alloys refurbed and they told me. After the refurb they were perfect until I recently clipped a pot hole and now the vibration has started again, although nowhere near as bad.
 
I'll see if my friend's mechanic mate can check over for the cracked alloy idea.

Not sure I'd have a cracked brake disc, I replaced those when I bought the car too, so only about 8 months old? Be a bit extreme for them to break without any knocks or anything??
 
Converge said:
I'll see if my friend's mechanic mate can check over for the cracked alloy idea.

Not sure I'd have a cracked brake disc, I replaced those when I bought the car too, so only about 8 months old? Be a bit extreme for them to break without any knocks or anything??
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Unlikely but not impossible. Much more likely on cheap discs or drilled/grooved ones.
 
Check bushes too, my fronts were completely shot, so got poweflex bushes fitted, cured the steering wheel wobble.
 
Steering angle sensor?

My A3 steering gets lighter when you're parking, a couple of months ago it was pretty unstable at motorway speeds so I read online that if you reset the steering sensitivity it stops this. Turn the engine on, hard lock the right, back to the center, hard lock to the left and back to the center. Turn engine off/on again. It seemed to have worked for me, the steering felt more stable on the motorway.
 
I had a similar problem & took it in for wheel balancing. I turned out that for some reason my Primacy 3s had "worn weird". They looked like the cars camber / alignment was completely ***** & had destroyed them. The whole lot was checked but everything was as it should be, new set of tyres were popped on & everything has been fine since then.
 
ci_newman said:
And get a specialist to re-balance the wheels, ATS are just as incompetant as kwik-fit
Click to expand...

Oh really? Duly noted!

I'll have a look around my area for a specialist. Not had a chance to sort out whether it could be buckling yet, busy busy!

Hopefully be able to sort it next week :)

Ta all for the replies. Once it's fixed I'll update the thread!
 
mrgubby said:
I had a similar problem & took it in for wheel balancing. I turned out that for some reason my Primacy 3s had "worn weird". They looked like the cars camber / alignment was completely ***** & had destroyed them. The whole lot was checked but everything was as it should be, new set of tyres were popped on & everything has been fine since then.
Click to expand...

On a TT? If it was the inside edge on the rears then from memory they have a reputation for being hard on the inside edge if the car is heavily laden regularly. I suspect quite a lot of smaller cars with IRS suffer from it, based on the camber I saw on a mini the other day that was loaded right down.
 
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