Greeting. You all were so helpful in helping me solve my last problem I'm hoping someone has experience with this.

I have a new to me 2007 R52. It's essentially a gen1 R53 with the top chopped off. I have been replacing all the suspension. So far I have replaced:
1. Control Arm Bushings
2. Both CV Axels
3. Outer ball joints
4. Front wheel hubs
5. Front and rear Struts & Mounts
6. Front Rotors and pads
7. 4 new tires (not run flats), wheels balanced. Alignment done.
8. New upper and lower engine mounts (made a huge difference at idle)

When driving on the freeway I am getting a decent steering wheel shake. At 50mph it's almost undetectable. At 60mph you start to feel it. At 70mph your hands are vibrating like a massage machine. At 85mph it's less violent, but it just feels like the vibrations are 'tighter' together. The vibrations are stronger underload going up hill, and lighter coasting down a hill. At lower speeds <50 it feels like the vibrations are longer in-between, and at higher speeds they get more rapid together.

What could this be? Based on my research I'm guessing:
1. Got bad set of unbalanced Axels from Amazon? (These were Mini Mod recommented. )
2. Something with the steering system? I haven't touched that part yet?
3. I swapped the front and rear tires yesterday. If anything it made it slightly worse.

Thanks in advance for all your help.

Unfortunately I didn't drive the car a lot before I started fixing things. I don't recall this vibration before, but the suspension and engine mounts were shot so it vibrated all the time then.

 

Was there any shaking before your suspension work? It could be a lot of things- like you said, bad axles, CV joints, something not installed or torqued correctly. If you switched tires and it made it worse it's likely not a broken belt, but maybe the balance is off because a wheel weight fell off or the balance just wasn't done right. I think I'd take a hard look at the easy things first before starting to take things apart. Good luck...

 

+1
That would be my novice guess...From my own experience having had a tech improperly balance/weight a tire or it went mia.
= Hoping it is that simple.

I've also experienced severe vibration @ highway speeds due to bad alignment *oops - EDIT - loose balljoint and also a bent control arm on an older car.

 

Does vibration happen at acceleration or just at the certain speed, even if you do not accelerate?
Bad axles usually vibrate at acceleration. My first guess would be unbalanced tires. Try to switch front to back and vice versa first.

 

It happens after 55mph and is strongest at 70mph. Above 80mph it's there, but the vibration seems to increase in frequency which then feels less overall, but it's just happening faster (if that makes sense).

I had a shop replace the lower control arm bushings. My previous post, I was getting jerking upon acceleration or deceleration, that turned out to be loose driver side inner ball joint bots. I torqued them down and checked the other side. Checked the control arm bolts. All seem OK now. I'm wondering if those loose bolts caused the ball joint to be damaged, would that cause this? I plan to replace them anyway.

I will have the tires balanced checked. They just did them last week. I also read that if it's the balance it should go away after x speed, so that seems unlikely. It also is stronger under acceleration load (up hill) vs same speed down hill or decelerating. Makes me think it's axel related? As I said they are new, but maybe I got a bad balanced one?

I'll keep you posted. Thanks for the help.

 

Sadly, it's not uncommon for a car to come to me with a vibration on the freeway complaint and the note that the tires were recently balanced "so that cannot be the problem". I approach cars like that the same way I approach any car that comes to me with that complaint - I will check tire balance first (unless an undercar inspection reveals some other obvious explanation for the vibration).

More often than not, the tires are out of balance and the vibration goes away when properly balanced.

A bad axle usually will vibrate on any medium to hard acceleration, so you should be able to test that at less than freeway speeds. Speaking of axles, you may want to make sure the support bearing on the right axle shaft is properly secured.

 

Well mystery solved. It was the tires. The balance was not off, but the tech found that the right side tires rims were slightly bent. He moved the front right to the rear left so both rims were on the rear. Shaking all gone. Glad it was that easy, no axel or other things. I still feel the vibration slightly from the rear, but tolerable till I figure out what to do with the rims some day.

Thank you all for the info. Very helpful as always. Appreciate this community.

 

Sounds like the CV joints and axles are out-of-balance ; where did you get your axles from?