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-   -   "My Car / Steering / Brake Vibrates While Driving" | What To Do (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/technical-stuff/132804-my-car-steering-brake-vibrates-while-driving-what-do-3.html)

Engine swinging on its mount perhaps. Or slight eccentricity of a worn flywheel. What car? How old? When was the last clutch job done? If clutch work was done, was flywheel faced and balanced? Check gearbox mounting as well.

Ford Ikon 1.8 pre-cambrian diesel engine.
About 11 year and 1,10,000 km old.

No idea about the last clutch job, previous owner must have done it, as the clutch feels good for another 50k or so.

Will check the gearbox mounts.

At 1.1L km, and 11 years, you might as well change the engine & GB mountings - the rubber would have gone hard enough not to absorb vibrations.

This is a great thread. I have been going nuts trying to figure out the judder while braking in my Honda Accord. This happens to me when I brake at speeds of 90+ kmph. I'm so happy you used the word judder - the word 'vibration' wasnt capturing the sensation I felt. However, I havent ever replaced the pads in my Honda Accord - so could it be something else? Or is it due to aging/rough use?

How old is the car? and how many km on the odo?

Judder on braking is frequently due to brake pad and / or disc issues. Sometimes, it's due to caliper pins running dry - that's usually easy to sort out. Very rarely will such a judder happen due to broken bearings or a loose suspension component.

It's 4 years old with 35k on the odo. Linkway Honda said they would need to do a massive overhaul running to 6 lakhs! Didn't get it done ofcourse. How safe is it to drive it till I get it fixed?

Excellent Thread!!

I have a Santro from past few days i am experiencing excessive vibration on the steering while braking. To my surprise there are no vibration on the brake pedal, but only steering wheel while braking.

Amit

Correct me if what I state is wrong: Your brakes stop the car just fine, but you get a judder when braking from 90+ km/h. The judder does not make the car uncontrollable, nor is braking efficiency/feel lost.

If the above statement is correct, it should be quite safe for you to drive the car regularly.

6L for what overhaul? Your best bet would be to find a good FNG - I believe there are plenty of them in Mumbai.
Worn suspension component (e.g. tie rod ends) or a steering rack that is loose in its mountings. Also check tyre treads for uneven wear.

SST'ji. I am noticing something peculiar with my vehicle. The vehicle's engine doesnt seem to have issues but when i am driving in the second gear, the car seems to be getting a grrrr...grrrrr intermittently. I drive with the foot off the clutch pedal unless i shift gears and this seems to happen only in the second gear(i am not lugging the car as well). One more thing is that my clutch pedal seems to give this feedback which matches the engine's idle. The entire floor of the car vibrates and i am currently unable to pinpoint the exact cause.

The initial information shared by me was incomplete. The braking efficiency is watered down & I do have to keep both hands on the wheel due to the feel I get from the car. So stopped taking it on long drives where I'd be driving that fast.

I bought a Skoda diesel, similar to the pic below, for a family member recently and noticed on the test drive it shuddered at between around 2 and 8Hz under load, road-speed dependent. The vendor passed this off as an out-of-balance roadwheel, which I instantly recognised as a mistake - either deliberate or not - since it only occurred under power.

Asking a little about the car's history it turned out it had spent its first 100,000 miles trailering racing cars. (Many would have been put off by this, but the chances were it had been well-maintained by people who understood motor cars. Chances were the rear arm bushes would have suffered, along with the clutch and shock absorbers. Only the dampers hadn't been replaced. The engine and gearbox are in superb order - they may have done 30,000 miles, not 160.) I recognised the symptom from a VW I had bought years ago, with similar mileage. The driveshafts are of the Rzeppa CV joint type for both inner and outer joints - not ideal for longevity under high-torque, the tougher tripod-type is used on many - and can wear to produce such a wobble under power.

It turned out the front top mounts were worn - an easy replacement, especially if the struts are coming out anyway as they were for new shock absorbers. With these new parts, the wobble is drastically reduced, to the point you only notice it on a very smooth road under 90kph, under heavy load.

A slight judder under braking had completely vanished, as a pleasant side-effect. Which just goes to remind us how important shock absorbers are (both condition and quality - cheap ones are less available than they once were and were the bane of old English cars, including Jaguar) as well as such innocuous little lumps of rubber as the strut top bushes.

Get your brake discs resurfaced at any garage with a lathe, it'll sort that out. 1.5 to 2k max.

I had the exact same problem in my linea.

1.5-2k for resurfacing is on higher side. I got resurfacing done on my accent discs, both for 200/- plus 100/- labour last month.

The brake disc (or brake rotor) is most likely warped. As long as there is enough thickness, it can be turned and fixed on a lathe. If your pads are worn, this is a good time to replace them as well. When you put it all together, make sure the lug nuts are torqued to spec using a torque wrench.

6L? dealer is fleecing you lol

Guys, I am facing this issue of vibrations in steering column at 110-120 kmph speeds as well as while braking from high speeds (higher than say 95kmph).

I own a Punto(with ~37K clocked) and had faced this exact same issue about 5K kilometers earlier also. Visited the service centre(Kashyap Fiat, Noida) and they diagnosed that the problem is with warped rotors. The rotors were faced and the problem disappeared.
[A side question: Should rotor facing charges be covered under warranty or not? They insisted that it's not covered under warranty. My car is currently under the 2 years, 50K warranty ].

Less than 5K kilometres later, I am again facing the exact same problem. So my guess is that the cause is also the same (warped rotors). My question is - can this happen so frequently on its own or is the root cause something different? And should I get the rotors replaced or again go for facing? Are rotors covered under warranty?

P.S : The brake pads are Fiat OEM and have not been changed yet.