So I have been chasing a bad vibration on my 82 Brat every since I have had it. It feels like it is on the driver side front. It only happens from about 55-70 MPH and only while accelerating. Sometimes it is very bad and cases the car to wander lanes. Once I am past 70 or under 55 it goes away.

 

I have changed out the CV axles with EMPI axles, the ball joints, the tie rod ends, the wheel bearings, and rotated the tires. Everything is torqued to spec. The only things I can think of is that maybe my hub is warped, My crappy tires are causing it (Kumho) or maybe the cone washers are bad. Any ideas?

Try rotating the tire from the side with the bad vibration to the other side and see if goes to the other side. Then you know its the tire/wheel. Make sure the they are balanced with no cupping.or weird wear. If you did the wheel bearing on the front make sure it has the proper pre load/torque and no excess movement. If you think the hub is warped maybe you could put a dial indicator on it and do a runout check. Just a few ideas.

Edited June 29, 201510 yr by SoobDood05

Based on all the other work you've done, you have probably done this, but like SoobDood05 says, check that the tires are balanced. I only take the time to reiterate because I had the EXACT same symptoms on my Loyale (same mph range as you describe). Turned out that the tires were just out of balance. 

I had them balanced, but everyone wants an arm and a leg to do it  ($20 a wheel, a complete new set of tires is less than that) so I had it done on base in the hobby shop....which is questionable as to the quality of the balance.

 

I had it pretty well managed for about a month until I tore it all apart for my 5 speed conversion, an alas, it retuned. I am thinking it has to be a crappy axle that doesn't seat well. I have several brand new ones I saved (cheap remans). Maybe Ill sacrifice one for its boots and rebuild my Subaru ones with some good grease. I originally thought they were the problem so I changed them out, but the problem didn't go away so they must still be good other than the torn boots.

 

If it were my spring washer, my axle nut would loosen right?

 

Cant wait to install my lift so I can run some good new rims with nice tires.

And like I said, its only 55-70 when accelerating. Guess Ill pony up and take it in. The vibration is annoying as hell and makes me want to drive my Crosstrek instead lol.

Edited June 29, 201510 yr by iluvdrt

95% chance that the high speed vibration is your wheels and/or tires.    Not a guess... I've had a couple tire shops tell me that figure.

  Could be tire separating .... bent wheel .... not balanced correctly... lost weight.

  A friend of mine sandblasted and powder coated his rims.   Bought new tires, mounted and balanced.   Had bad vibration.   He had the shop re-balance all 4 wheels ... twice.    All his front-end components checked out ok.  Still bad vibration up front.

   I finally told him to try a different tire shop... guess what... they re-balanced all 4 and no more vibration. 

  This leads me to believe that some spin balancers may not be calibrated correctly.

I don't know about you guys out west where these cars are still plentiful (compared to here at least) but I've always run in to a lot of trouble getting my tires balanced because nobody has the proper wedge to cup the (gigantic) center hole that the 4x140 rims have, so the rim never sits on the balance machine properly. Maybe when your rims were balanced, it wasn't seated properly and they put the weights on in the wrong spots that could make a slight vibration really bad.

However you say it only happens as you're accelerating? So if you accelerate to 65 it shakes on the way there but as soon as you hold the gas pedal steady to maintain speed the vibration goes away? That makes me think bad axle or wheel bearing or hub....

 

Yeah, Ill give it another shot.

 

there is a small vibrating cruising between those speeds, something I have just attributed to a 13" tire spinning that fast. It's barely noticeable, except when I accelerate or try to maintain speed uphill.

Getting bad axles out of the box isn't unheard of. I had very similar symptoms a few years ago and it was a bad DOJ 20 miles into a new axle.

When I was running the old white Subaru wagon wheels, I had to get them balanced at a dealer.

 

I have had more than one tire suffer a failure of the tread to belts bonding.  This makes a slight bulge in the tread.  Oddly, it makes a shimmy in the steering that comes and goes at different speeds.  The cause of the failure was alignment too far off.

Bubble balancers are better for small tires/rims. I've had tire shops tell me and my dad that all the time guys who have done this 20 plus years. On the farm we have a old coats bubble balancer we picked up for $20 a couple months ago which works great for the subaru's because of the big hub. People have been selling these on craigslist for $200 plus.

 

like this one

I know one of the new axles I got was bad. The spindle threads were jacked up and in stalled you could see where the shaft was bent in the middle.

 

Ill sacrifice that one to build a new one. In the mean time, Ill just the tires rebalanced and from there. That's the easiest to do.

I had them balanced, but everyone wants an arm and a leg to do it  ($20 a wheel, a complete new set of tires is less than that)

20 bucks a tire!?

 

My tire guy charges $30 for all four! He takes the wheels of the car and the tires off of the wheels, installs and balances the new tires, and puts the wheels back on the car for a total of $30.

Edited June 30, 201510 yr by jmoss5723

Well I found a place that did it for $30. Didn't eliminate it totally, but it did make it very manageable.

I knew a guy who had funky vibration from his tires.  He tried many times to balance them and it never quite went away.  Finally he discovered one of the tires had water in it and that was the problem.  Must have gotten in from an air compressor somewhere along the line.