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Thanks for the input on the "hub centering rings". It never occurred to me that could be the problem. I will certainly give it a try if my shimmy comes back.
jimjames:
They way overtightened your wheels. Every car I've owned when getting the tires replaced, first thing when I get home I use the T-handle to loosen the lugs and then retighten them by hand. This way I know if I have a flat on the road I can replace the tire. To tire jockeys time is money...thus the use of the air impact wrench.
It sounds like you guys may be on to something with the torqueing & the proper centering on the hubs.
I had a thought. I've never heard of "hub centering rings", but I have a tightening method I use to make sure my wheels are always centered, and I think it works pretty good. I dunno, maybe this is common knowledge, but here goes:
1. Place the wheel on the lugs & install all four lug nuts, but do not tighten - do not even begin to tighten - leave the nuts at least 3 turns loose.
2. Begin tightening the nuts 1/4 to 1/2 turn at a time by hand - be sure to use a criss-cross pattern (tighten one nut, then go to the one diagonally accross from it, then one of the ones adjacent to that, then the one diagonally accross from that - continue this pattern as you go)
3. As you turn each nut a little at a time by hand, the chamfer (angled part) of the nut will begin to make contact with the chamfer on the wheel. At this point, the wheel is still free to move left & right & up & down a little. Because of the chamfers, each nut will automatically center that wheel hole around that lug. It is very important to turn each nut a little at a time for the wheel to adjust & center itself - never fully tighten one nut, then go to the next.
4. After fully hand tightened, use the lug wrench in the same manner - snug each nut up a little at a time, following the same criss-cross pattern. Just snug the nuts, don't fully tighten
5. Use the torque wrench to finish tightening.
Hope this makes sense & is of some help.
I will be retorquing all the lugs this weekend. And in the future, I will pull the wheels and take them in for tire mounting. Or as my Hyundai dealer said, "what do you expect for $6 an hour?"
On the wheel shimmy thing, I got to wondering. Some of us have had little or no shimmy in our Elantras. Could it be that the centering hole in the wheel is not consistant in tolerance?
He also has no idea how to use a torque wrench! You have to tighten UP to the torque. The only thing he did was verify that the nut wasn't under tightened - but he didn't torque it. Jeez! He could have over torqued it by 1 or 200 ft lbs, and stressed the stud and the nut. That's a good way to snap the stud.
To be honest, this is the first I've ever heard of REALLY having to tighten lug nuts to a specified torque. I've seen the torque values listed in manuals & stuff, but I've never whipped out my torque wrench to tighten my lugs, just did it by feel.
As far as tolerance, yea I think someone touched on that here recently. I guess it's possible that the location or size of the hole is out of tolerance (poor workmanship), or that the tolerance is too large (poor design). The hub diameter could also be undersized. It's hard to determine if you're in spec unless you've got a) the Hyundai blueprints or specs for the wheel & hub, and b) the proper inspection tools to measure these dimensions.
The center hub rings must not have been expensive because the tire place installed it for free when I complained about increased shimmy problem.
To all: I have also experienced a light shimmy from 65-70 or so, I believe even before any rotation service was ever done, and also since new tires were bought (Dunlop SP Sport A2). No remedy sought. Much of my freeway driving is at 80 or 85 (and it's sooooooo smooth at 90!). I am very close to 44K miles.
After four hours of driving my intermitently shaky elantra GT, I can say that I am honestly regretting my purchase. I loved it when I purchased it new 9 months ago, but now I'm on the verge of hating this car. Any trip more than an hour by highway is now a dreadful chore instead of a pleasant journey. And before anyone responds with "the car shakes a little, so what?", my shimmy is characterized by the steering wheel bouncing from left to right by 1/2 to 1" (picture the steering wheel spokes bouncing up and down by 1/2-1"). Imagine holding that vibrating wheel for an hour or 2.
Haven't figured what I'm gonna do yet..Sears installed the rims..maybe I can get them to install the hub rings..probably want 10 bucks a tire..Oh well....Thanks Jack
The shimmy on my car changed after a suspect tire/wheel was moved to the back. I'm calling up the tire place that did the rotation for me to let them know, and maybe they'll help me get a new tire.
Instead of the steering wheel wobbling when turning the wheel at high speeds, things now feel a bit smoother. Sure, I expect a little road feel, but the last time I checked, the road wasn't made of Jello :P
Be aware that many shimmy problems are the result of the combination of: inadequate rotation practices, insufficient inflation pressure and misalignment.
It occurrs mostly on freewheeling axles, so that would be the rears of a FWD. Even if the alignment is good, you can get it, which is why it is imporatnt to rotate your tires regularly.
Hope this helps.
1. The brakes are starting to squeal when I put a certain amount of pressure on them.
2. I am noticing an ever-growing engine noise that's hard to describe. The best way to describe it is that it sounds like a ball-bearing rolling at a high-speed around in an aluminum can.
3. The steering wheel squeaks every once in a while, especially when backing out of a parking spot.
Do any of you 04 GLS owners have this problem? If so, did you ever find out what the cause/solution was?
Thanks.
What is shimmy?
What tips do you about service?
Should I take the car to the dealer for all scheduled services or am I shooting myself in the foot and forefit the warranty?
Thanks
All the best
Welcome to the Elantra club. A friendly hint: don't go rotating your tires unnecessarily. Many owners here have had little to no shimmy until a tire rotation and BAM! Welcome to Shimmy City. Personally, I'd rather deal with a shorter tread life that a shorter shimmy-free life.
I avoided rotating mine and kept my Elantra shimmy-free until my OEM Michelins got worn down to racing slicks. Now I'm finding my shimmy impossible to remedy. And it pushes me to the brink of sanity each time I take the car on the highway. So much so that I'm thinking of scrapping the "drive it 'til it dies" goal I set when I first bought the car to dumping my '02 as soon as next spring.
If I could separate the car from the shimmy issue, I love it. But that's not a possibility. Drive the Elantra, deal with the shimmy.
As far as taking your car to the dealer for maintenance, as baber said, you certainly don't have to (so long as you are performing the maintenance and retaining the records). Personally, I try to avoid my dealer, Metro Hyundai, at all costs. They tend to break more things than they fix. Interestingly, they advertise themselves as having the highest customer satisfaction in the Twin Cities, yet everyone I've spoken with that's purchased a car from them shares my sentiment. If their assertion is indeed correct, the other dealers in Minneapolis must be a complete disaster.
So beware - though Hyundai is making vastly better cars than they did in the past, Hyundai dealer support is still lagging the industry. I mistakenly thought it was great the first year I owned mine. The service dept. seemed very eager to please during that year, and within a couple of weeks of each service visit, I would get a survey from Hyundai. I couldn't sing enough praises about both Hyundai and my dealer at the time.
But now, even though I'm still in the bumper-to-bumper portion of my warranty, Metro Hyundai has become a nightmare to deal with. It's obvious the dealer knows exactly when Hyundai stops sending owner surveys to follow-up service visits, as that's exactly when the good service stopped.
The shimmy on my car comes and goes. It's usually worse right after I accelerate and start cruising at 65-70 or so, and then it goes away to an extent but then comes back.
I had a tire place tell me that the tires aren't really at fault here -- instead, it's something in the Elantra's drivetrain/powertrain or suspension that can't handle tires once they get past a certain age (even if they are well balanced and in spec).
I mentioned in a previous post that BMW redesigned a suspension component for the 3 Series after enough people complained about vibrations in their cars. Does anyone on here know a good number to call at Hyundai to complain to and also see if they'll move this problem high up on their quality improvement to-do list?
One other thing -- is it possible to balance the Elantra's wheels while they are ON the car? Could balancing this way detect whatever is on the car that's messing things up and then compensate for that?
I'm pricing out new tires for my Elantra right now. Does anyone know a good shimmy-free tire?
First I tried a set of Yokoma Avid Tourings and that's when I joined the Shimmy Club. I don't know that the tires per se caused the shimmy, but without a doubt something related to the tire changeover introduced the shimmy. I know because I drove in to the shop shimmy-free and out with a major shimmy. There was no gradual change.
I sent the Yokos back thinking I got an out-of-round tire or two, but the Kumho Estas I replaced them with have got the shimmy thing going on too.
My suggestion: if you have an Elantra and don't have a shimmy, don't pull the wheels off unless you are replacing the tires or pads.
One of the main issues here is the special care one must take when placing the wheels back on the car. This includes putting them on the hub correctly (something about a blue mark on the wheel and on the hub) and also applying the right torque to the lugnuts. I also wonder if rotating the tires more often will help keep them in shape too (maybe every 6K instead of 7-10K).
Considering that this seems to be mainly an issue with the Elantra (and not other small cars), I bet Hyundai could still redesign some suspension or transaxle components to keep this from coming back.
One other question for those in the board -- does anyone with a 96 through 2000 Elantra have the same shimmy issue? I don't remember hearing about this until the 01 redesign came out.
One final question -- has anyone here actually dumped their Elantra because of this problem?
The long verision- I have an 04 Elantra GT 5 door (hatchback). On all the Elantras, there is a special buckle in the rear for the center passenger, that only fits the center seat belt. In fact, center is engraved in the plastic of the buckle. It makes logical sense that this special center buckle would be in the center. The rear seat should look like normal buckle-center buckle-normal buckle. I checked the showroom Elantra (not a 5 door) and it was set up this way. On mine, looking from the passenger to drivers side, mine is normal buckle-normal buckle-center buckle. This means if three people were in the backseat, two of their seat belts would cross (same with a car-seat).
When I dropped my car off for an oil-change, I told them to fix this problem. They said it was fixed when I went to pick up the car. It wasn’t, so I left it there again. The next day when I went to pick it up, the problem still wasn’t fixed, so I got one of the service guys, brought him into the showroom, showed him the seatbelt arrangement on the showroom floor car, and then brought him out to mine. He started going into “it came from the factory that way, it’s a bad design ” I basically had to say to him, “fine, it came from the factory that way, but it’s not supposed to be that way and it’s your problem to fix not mine to live with”
I followed him into the garage, watched him pull of the rear seat, and then the rear seat belt bracket. The bracket itself seemed to be the faulty part, as if you rotated it one way, it wouldn’t fit into the indentation for it and if you flipped it, the buckles would face backwards instead of forwards. I told him to replace the part with one that was correct, they said they didn’t carry that. I said pull a good one off another car and we went to 2 5 doors on the lot, and they all had the same problem. I told him to take the one off the showroom floor, and the mechanic said that the 4 door had a different bracket then the 5, and this was just a bad design by Hyundai. It looks to me like whoever makes the seat belt bracket for Hyundai, made a bunch of them in reverse. He said that if they ever make some the right way he’d call. But long story short, its still the same way.
Anyone familiar with this or have this problem?
Ps. Although my cd’s sound great, the radio reception has a lot of static? They said everything check out, and it’s not so bad that it couldn’t just be normal, just wondering if anyone else has this.? Thanks
As for the rear seat belt arrangement, I noticed the arrangement when I got my '04 GT 5-door but thought it was designed that way to provide more hip room for the seatbelt users. I use all three belts in the car a lot (3 kids) and they've never had any problem figuring out how to use the belts or wearing the belts, so I've chalked it up to a "feature" vs. a problem.
i have a 2003 GLS bought on may03, manufactured on feb03. i just hit the 14k mark yesterday. the problem is the car pulls left on the left lane and pulls right on the right lane, even at speeds as low as 10-20 mph, it just pulls stronger as i reach the highway speeds. and this is not a drift or slight pull, after half-hour highway driving my arms gets real stiff trying to keep the car straight. probably the 'crown' or 'bank' of the road which is there to drain the rain water from the road surface causes this. driving on the left lane i have a constant left pull and i have to keep the steering wheel slightly turned to right (maybe 5 degrees), and on the right lane i need to counter-steer it towards left to keep the car between the lines! and sometimes especially on concrete multi-lane highways when driving on the center lane where the surface is level, the car and the steering wheel goes perfectly straight, no shimmy or pull, once i drove at 65mph for almost 30 secs. with no hands on the wheel, everything feels on-center and smooth when the road is perfectly level. but even slight banking causes the loss of that on-center feel and since every pavement has a slight bank, i constantly have to deal with that annoying spring like pull and counter-steer the car to drive it straight! and as you can guess, i have a great amount of bump-steer, even while driving at 30 mph on a straight stretch of the road slightest bumps caused by the collapsing asphalt pavement makes me steer the car as if i'm driving a rally car on rough gravel at 80mph.
and i have this problem (or feature?) from day one along with torque-steer which i knew about it before purchasing, which seemed to be the only downside of my purchase.
four wheel alignment checked twice (dealer and another tire shop which specializes on alignments), tires rotated, balanced, wheel nuts centered and torqued by torque wrench, and i check the air pressure weekly, keep it at 32psi since i drive it mainly at highway speeds. i tried all pressure ranges from 28 to 35 just felt the same.
since the car drives smooth and straight on level pavement, my best guess is the caster value on front wheels, but the service manual says caster and camber is pre-set at factory and doesn't need to be adjusted. the results of the last alignment says the caster is 2.4 degrees on the left and 2.7 on the right (range is 2.3-3.3) i believe that with that positive caster i should have more stability. my last car was a 94 cavalier, and even with 140k miles, it really had a great on-center feel and drove straight, i believe it had more positive caster since it was a nightmare to park in the city and don't even ask me its turning radius.
steering wheel doesn't seem to have real free-play, but when i hit the highway speeds the wheel gets so loose and light it feels like freely rotating. and hyundai claims this car having a speed-sensitive steering in which case i believe i should feel the exact opposite.
i wonder if you have the same problem. i know all cars have different directional stability and caster settings but i feel that this pull is not normal.
i wonder if anybody has a similar problem (or feature?)
My point, is I made sure they understood..
TIGHTEN LUGS TO FACTOR SPECS as not to warp the
rotor. And all was well.
I think sometimes these grease monkeys and impact wrenches tighten and undertighten lugs without a torque wrench and warp the rotors.
Just a theory...
ElantraStan
http://www.stanarseneaux.com/elantra
Check out this weekend's detailed job and cargo
trunk mat mod.
I took the car back to the tire shop last week for a third attempt to fix the shimmy. Since they have the Hunter radial force equipment and my dealer doesn't, I figured I'd give them 1 more shot before going to the dealer. They checked the balance and radial force... front tires were 8 and 10 lbs (Hyundai recommends <18lbs). One of the rears was 23lbs, but the tire guys said that's not high enough to justify buying a new tire. Again they said the pretty heavy feathering of the front tires was responsible for the shimmy and it will go away. The feathering was caused by the alignment being out of spec and the fact that I never rotated my tires (I did 1st alignment, balance, and rotation at 13K miles, 03Elantra GT). The feathering was pretty obvious, so I thought the tire guys must be right. Well the next day and each day since it's been smooth sailing from 60mph to 80+. I am sooooo confused???? Happy, but confused.
Further investigation revealed that they completely rebalanced the tires (i.e. pulled the weights off and started over) instead of simply checking the balance. Did that cure the problem? When they were putting the tires back on, did they happen to find a favorable orientation? I know they didn't do anything to change the radial force and the feathering did not disappear so what cured the problem? Unfortunately, I cannot say. I tend to think the re-balance cured my Elantra, but the annoying part is that it may not work on someone elses.
2 things about your post got my attention: 1) the extreme steering wheel freeplay at highway speeds and 2) torque steer. I've never felt torque steer in either of my cars (one is a 5spd and the other is an auto). Besides, the elantra torque peaks at 130ish ft-lbs, which I would think is too low to cause serious tugging. I'm wondering if these 2 things are actually related and an indication of some front end problems? Has the dealer checked out the car?
I brought up the possibility of bad alignment to both the tire shop and the dealership, but neither said I had to worry about it because the car isn't drifting or pulling. I figure that for under $100, I might as well get this done -- maybe I'll do that when I replace the tires down the road instead, though.
So, perhaps a "complete" balancing might be a way to fix the shimmy issue, although you figure that if it's balanced, it's balanced.
Oh well, another trip to the tire store then... I'll let everyone know what happens. (I'm also going to the dealership to use some coupons Hyundai sent me for a free brake inspection and a free "safety" inspection, so maybe they'll catch something then too.)
Backy reminded me that the last time I went to this particular tire shop they applied way too much torque to the lug nuts. I want to check, but quite honestly I'm scared to go anywhere near my tires now that it seems to be running smooth :-)... something about leaving well enough alone. But if I leave them overtorqued, the rotors might potato chip on me... what to do, what to do.
I think the next question here is....what is Hyundai going to do when it cannot fix a car that it built and warranties to be free of these problems?
My experience has been...ambivalence..put it off..
Has anyone here ever gotten any replacement/recompense for a car that is apparently terminally defective?
As I have said before...If it wasn't for this problem this would be as nice a car as I have ever owned(except my 01 Max).
Any feedback on this question? Jack
I also had another weird rattle over some bumps, and it turned out to be the ashtray. I pulled the ashtray out just ever so slightly, and the noise disappeared. (The 04 model has a different ashtray design, though, so you can't pull it out slightly -- it's either in all the way or out.)
As for the rattle in the door, I think this is something that's been covered here before. The solution was to loosen up the screws, maybe spray some WD40 into the door itself, and then tighten the screws again. I had the occasional rattle in the front passenger door that I could fix temporarily by simply pulling on the door handle, but doing the above fixed it for good.
One more source for a rattle is the headliner or even the visors. If you push things back into place, that might help quiet any popping noises you hear from those areas over certain bumps.
As for your brakes, mine used to make a horrendous thoomp noise at low speeds in wet weather, but they don't do this as much anymore. Part of it is normal -- but you should still have the dealership check it out anyway.
One thing I noticed on this last wheel that was so reluctant to come off in the first place: it didn't seem to seat very well on the hub. Perhaps it's just my paranoia (but the other wheels seemed to seat much better), but I'm really thinking the wheel might be warped.
I had a new thought come to me as I was walking to work in downtown Minneapolis the other day. Maybe I could rent a car (there is a place that rents cars out of a different level of the same ramp I park in and some of those are, interestingly enough, Elantras).
So...I could borrow my dad's Olds for a day, leave it downtown, rent an Elantra and take it home for a night (praying I get one without a shimmy). Then I can swap the wheels off that one, put them on mine and vice versa. Rotating the spare between the two cars, if I work quick, I think I can get that done within an hour.
Then I can drive both cars and see what changed. If my car no longer has the shimmy and the rental does, at least I can be 100% certain that my shimmy is a wheel/tire thing and nothing else. Then I can swap the wheels back - one at a time - driving the car between each individual wheel switch (and with a little luck, maybe I can pinpoint the exact culprit).
Right now I just feel I've got too many variables to really narrow down my problem effectively. At this point I don't have any confidence in the tire shop or the dealer. I feel like I'm on my own to figure this problem out. I could start replacing everything under the sun, but my fear is that I will end up shelling out hundreds of dollars for a fix that never comes (and for a problem that was likely caused by the very same people trying to remedy it, no less).
A rental Elantra couldn't be too expensive for a day. It couldn't hurt.
Any thoughts? Does this sound crazy?
Well worth a try!
ElantraStan
I'm not making any suggestions here, but if the tires from the rental elantra fix the problem, some people might be tempted to 'forget' to switch the tires back ;-)
I think you are right about being on your own. It seems the dealers are your best friend until you stop getting the surveys from Hyundai. Then you are on your own.
My shimmy has nearly gone away since the weather got warm. It was much worse in the cold. My plan to buy one rim/tire is on hold if the shimmy comes back in the winter. Other than the slight shimmy my Elantra has been trouble free.
Good luck with your's.
So is there something wrong, or is it just a cheap stereo? I did a quick search on this discussion, and I saw someone else with a similar stereo problem, but no solution. Ground problem?
I have no idea what the issues are, but I plan on bringing it up with the dealer when I go in for the 30K evaluation (probably in a couple of months). There is a site where the solution might be found: https://dcsonline.hyundaidealer.com/customer/index.jsp
I haven't had time to look in detail, but you can search under electrical systems and it provides flow charts for diagnosing various audio problems. You're probably on track with the grounding hypothesis.
My radio problem isn't covered - I bought my car used, so I just have powertrain warranty. But your car is so new, they have to take care of that.
Now I have NO AM signal because SOMEONE STOLE MY ANTENNA!!!!
I'm thinking of replacing it with a power antenna - I guess I'll have to go aftermarket. I was thinking of putting a power one in anyway - it's the only additional feature that I wish I had on my Elantra. Don't have to remove it at the carwash, kids can't vandalize it, and it can't get stolen.
I don't think there's a stock power antenna for Elantras, is there?