Vibration In Steering Wheel

[kitbear]

I am new to the club and just spent the last hour and a half reviewing all of the LS postings. This appears to be a great site for Lexus owners, happy I found it.

My problem is a vibration in the steering column in a couple of different situations. The first is moderate to hard acceleration. The other is when accelerating from overdrive causing a downshift. The vibration ranges from very light to moderate. The seems to depend on how hard the acceleration is.

My mechanic briefly checked the problem, but said he could not locate the source.

Has anyone experienced this? If so what is the cause/resolution?

Thanks.

[98 LS]

Year .....?

Miles .....?

[kitbear]

1995

101,600

[UCF3]

Has your mechanic checked out the obvious, rotors, bad tires, low pressure, tie rods, ball joints, worn strut&mount etc?

The only issue I've come across is a strange vibration caused by the steering column itself. You might need to check out Cureline.net to go over what they have on this issue. The site is currently under construction, but you can also email him.

[VBdenny]

I was told by the Lexus dealer that the upper control arms are a weak point on this car. They are magnesium and the ball joint is intergrated. Your vibration sound like a weak suspension compnet.

They are had to check yourself, find some alignment guy (or girl) that is understands. Many times they find problems when doing alignments as they can't make a setting stick.

[VMF]

check tranny mounts as well and first thing you should check is TIRE BALANCE. make sure you do this b4 you will start any expensive repair. i had this problem on the same car is ur and it turned out that those car are very sensitive to the tire balance which was the cause in my case. next probable cause is engine and tranny mounts. have them checkedif vibration will still be there after you balance ALL your tired each one on the BOTH sides.

[Zdeno]

I FIGURED OUT this problem when I changed the trany and motor mounts !

[lexur]

Hi Zdeno,

How much they cost (parts & labor) to chnage the trany and engine mounts? I think my 96 LS has the same problem. It's not just the steering wheel shaking. The entire front section is shaking during hard acceleration. The symptom doesn't happen all the time. Usually happen when the car is cold.

[Zdeno]

I bought the all mounts from newlexusparts.com(check the prise there) they are cheapest what I found. I tried autozone, kragen etc. but the mounts are dealer parts like 99% lexus parts. I changed them by myself. Trany mount is very easy to change but the motor mounts will take you a while to do to.