1. While driving my steering wheel shakes. Not violently and it doesn't pull. But it shakes that when doin 50+mph I have to hold the wheel tightly to hold it from shaking. I do have aftermarket wheels on my car and thought it was the set I had on the front and that they were out of balance. So When I rotated the tires I figured it would clear up and it hasn't.

2. When stopped if I have the wheel turned more then 50% it shakes so bad you can visibly see it. There is also noise associated with this. I did contact my local MINI Dealer about this and they said I can bring the car in to have it looked at. Gosh taking my car to the Dealer (Dr to me) is horrible.

Any words of wisdom from a fellow Mini owner?

 

maybe all the tires are out of balance. I'd say talk to the people who balanced them and see if you can get them checked to make sure they actually are balance correctly.

on another note...
I had something similar happen to my old car (95 geo prizm) that turned out to be the CV joints going up on the front. My car would be fine under ~40mph, the second you wanted to go any faster the car would shake pretty violently. When I took a look under the car I could see grease that was splattered under the car, near the wheel well, that seemed to indicate that the rubber boot around the CV joint had gotten some holes in it. I ended up selling the car to my friend and his dad (they wanted another cheap little car to use for misc. stuff), they fixed the CV joints and that fixed the problem.

 

I considered that the wheels are out of balance and worry about the cost to get them checked/fixed. I had some balanced and shipped from discounttiredirect.com

I'll check on cost for balancing, etc. Thanks.

 

Only a guess now, but if it shakes when you are stopped I’d think it has something with the power steering unit/motor.

 

exactally! an out of balance wheel will only vibrate when moving.

 

That was my thought exactly.

 

Are your aftermarket wheels hubcentric? If not that is your problem. You may need hub rings.

 

Do you still have the stock wheels and tires? If so, maybe you could mount them and see if the problem goes away. If it does, the problem is with the wheels. If not, then you can look for other causes.

 

Why would that have any effect when he is stoped. Or let me rephrase that, why would the wheels make the steering wheel shake when not moving?

 

one more vote for the PS unit to be effed up.

 

Well I do have (aluminum) hub centric rings with my wheels. I do still have the original wheels. I have gone ahead and made an appt to get the wheels rebalanced and the alignment checked. If this doesn't correct the wheel shaking at speed I will call my Service advisor. I realize the balancing and alignment has nothing to do with the wheel shaking when the car is stopped.


Thank you all for your comments.

 

edit: nevermind...didn't read the last post

Do you need or are you using correct hub-centric rings? I experienced similar problem (wheel shake at 50-60mph) that was not attributable to balancing problems which was corrected after I replaced the plastic rings with aluminum (aluminum has tighter tolerance).

 

Well I had my wheels balanced this afternoon. They said they all were very bad. And well, the car drives awesome now!! No wheel shake while driving and it is very solid feeling now (more then usual).

As for the wheel shake when stopped, I haven't experienced it yet. Maybe I was to happy cruising along with my wheel comfortable in my hand.