Steering wheel vibrates after 60mph.

[Liopik]

Hi all. 

Finally I bought an Avensis . 1.8 petrol, 86k, 56 plates. 

And now I noticed that the steering wheel vibrates when I drive 60mph+. Its perfectly smooth below 6pmph. 

One more thing I noticed is that the outer side of the front left wheel is worn off to legal limit 1.6mm, but inner side of that wheel still got about 2.5mm. Roughly. Front right wheel is ok. 

And another thing I noticed is that when I brake, on any speed, it feels a bit odd. Basically, I can hear that I'm breaking, but it's not any sqweeking or similar. Its some rough sound, and I can feel that brake pedal is not smooth while braking. 

Don't know if all these symptoms are consequences of the same problem or not. 

For your information, I drove an old Corsa before buying Avensis, though never experienced any odd feelings with brakes and steering wheel vibration. 

Could it be a easy fix or I will need spend a furtune to fix my problems? Wanna arm with info before the garages will rip me off. 

[alan333]

You probably have three separate problems:

Your vibration is probably wheel balancing, and your left tyre is gubbed anyway.  If your rear tyres are good try swapping them onto the front and see if the vibration disappears.  If, however, the vibration is only when braking then it's probably brake discs.

The edge of the tyre wearing is probably tracking, ie the wheels aren't pointing exactly the way they should.  It could also be hard driving causing excess wear while cornering.

The rough sound probably means that the brake discs are worn.  However even newish discs can give this sound if the car's been sitting in the wet, and the brake disc slightly 'surface rusts'.

[Liopik]

Thank you Alan. 

Will start from swapping the rear tyres to front. 

And vibration is while acceleration above 60mph, didn't pay attention if vibrates braking from 70. Will check later today. 

 

[Heidfirst]

it's also worth mentioning that I never found the braking on my T25 confidence inspiring on the standard discs & pads - ultimately it worked but little feedback.

Was better both in terms of feel & imo in performance when I changed to 3rd party parts (in my case MTEC discs & Ferodo Premier pads but possibly the pads alone would be an improvement. Other brands are available & have been used e.g. Mintex).

[Liopik]

Thank you. 

Will an independent garage be able to sort my problems out, or it's dealers to charge me over the odds? 

[Heidfirst]

How long is a piece of string? There are bad independents & good dealers & vice-versa.

[Liopik]

Ok gents. Thanks for advises. 

Went to check the wheels first. It turned out that the front right rim was badly bended, I could see it wobbly on the spinning machine. So had it swapped with rear one. Front left wheel was ok. And regarding front left tyre, actually it wasn't that bad. I could barely see any difference between inner and outer side of the tyre. Don't know why I got this wrong last time.

So now, steering wheel does not tremble any more and car feels more sticky to road at 70mph, brakes also became very smooth and no more odd feeling when pressing brake pedal.

Now I need 16" alloy to replace that wobbly rim I have on the rear. In eBay I can see 16 inch rims "WHL11650", "WHL11676", "WHL10168" or some other numbers. On the pictures they all look same. Is there any difference between them? 

[Heidfirst]

those nos. are motorhog's stock item reference (WHL=wheel) - they are not Toyota codes.

[Liopik]

4 minutes ago, Heidfirst said:

those nos. are motorhog's stock item reference (WHL=wheel) - they are not Toyota codes.

Thank you very much.