Pleas help G6 vibration that can’t be solved

[alicia]

Please forgive me if this is in the wrong thread. Please, I hope someone can help me get to the bottom of this as it is driving me nuts.
Okay; here goes. I have a 2007 Pontiac g6 four door 3.5 v6. 84,000 miles. The car seems to have had a slight collision, maybe in the front but it wasn’t totaled or anything. I have a vibration that is driving me bonkers. Ill list my problems and what I have tried to remedy it.
The car has a walking side to side vibration feeling at low speed and it seems to be coming from the rear and more so from the passenger side then the driver side. The car also has a moderate constant vibration above 50-mph but the sweet spot seems to be 50-60-mph. I believe that vibration is different from the “walking” and I’ll tell why in a minute. The 50-60 vibration can be felt in the steering wheel slightly buy also in the seat, floor and the wiper vibrates on the windshield. Both have been felt before the new tires, although I don’t remember the vibration @50+ being as bad but maybe I wasn’t paying attention. Here’s a list of things I have tried.
1.) New Douglass tires from chinamart (i know I know) but I needed a set pronto.

2.) New Brake pads and rotors on all four wheels, this was needed anyways because I had let them get to bad.

3.) Two new wheel bearings on the front as they were audibly bad. (wonder if it wasn’t related to letting the brakes go to long before service.

4.) Computer balanced three times, twice by wallyworld and once by a mom & pops tire shop. I should probably mention that the first time wallyworld balanced them, they put the passenger rear side on the front passenger side and it was horrible. I couldn’t drive over 40mph. So I took it back and had them re-balanced by two different “techs” (what a joke) . Anyways, this time I stood and watched them and they done everything right, all four wheels were out of balance and the tech told me that the original passenger wheel had a slight wobble/warp to it, so took it off the front and put it on the back. This time it was much better but still had a slight vibration and I opted to take it somewhere else. After being me fun of and lectured for buying wallyworld tires, I leave it with the shop and go to work. He calls me and tells me he has it fixed so I pick it up and its the same damn thing…

5.) So he suggests I have them road forced balanced because it should show a bad tire or wheel. All four wheels PASS including the rear passenger but it has the lowest score but still passes a couple points above failing and the computer tells the tech that the rear passenger wheel has a high spot and the tire has a low spot so the tech rotates the low spot of the tire to the high spot on the wheel and runs it again, this time it passes easily with a higher score then before so I think problem solved, right? Wrong. It still has the same vibration. So they recommend a new set of tires as they say wallyworld’s tires are junk. or replace the rear wheel. So I opt to replace the wheel with a used one that’s been “spun”because its the cheapest. But it still doesn’t fix the problem. The road force shop then says that they believe the rear tire has flat spotted even though you can’t visually see a flat spot.

6.) I had three mechanic shops, (not tire shops) check all of the car over. One shop said that one or more tires was “out of round”, and no suspension parts or axles would cause it plus they were all in good shape. One shop said that they could find anything wrong at all, couldn’t even feel the vibration and charged me $40 bucks. The third checked it over and told me that the vibration was coming from the front but he checked everything over and couldn’t find the problem. I ask him if he could do any thing else to it and he refused to work on it cause he said it was nothing but a guessing game trying to find the culprit and he would be out a lot of money because he technically couldn’t charge me for labor or parts unless it fixed it. The first and last mechanic however said that I had a sway bar making a popping sound, which I forgot to note. There is a popping dull sound when going over bumps. Two mechanics say its a sway bar or link. I though shocks, struts..whatever but they said no.

7.) I have tried using the spare on the rear passenger wheel which seems to almost eliminate the “walking” at lower speeds but still seems to have the vibration @ 50 mph+. I’m wondering though if that could be coming from the spare wheel cause you are supposed to drive at lower speeds with the spare. I also tried it on the rear driver side and the walking came back. I also tried it on the front to no avail. I did however notice quite a bit more vibration at 50 mph + which is why I assume or hoping that some of the rear walking is being felt in the front. I have also done some checking myself and this is what I found. Both rear wheels when off the ground spin and catch midway through the spin, they do a complete revolution but catch and slow down. (may be normal, I don’t know). I have noticed a very intermittent sound coming from the rear, kind of reminds me of the front wheel bearings but hard to pin it down because its low and intermittent. I also noticed that the front passenger side tire is very slightly worn on the outside more then the inside but alignment checks out.

I’m at my ropes end with this car and tired of spending money to not fix it. Plus its driving me nuts and I need to get it fixed asap or write it off as a loss and trade it in, which is what one mechanic recommended to do. Thanks for any info you may have. Also, sorry for any errors in writing or anything.

I also want to mention that I locked the wheels up and slid probably 20ft or so on one rainy afternoon when some idiot ran a red light. I don’t know if that could cause any problems with the tires or what but I can’t really see or feel any flat spots on any tires.

Topic

[Richard Kirshy]

If as you have stated the wheels, tires and mechanics all check out.
I would guess, it may be due to collision damage you stated.
It doesn’t take much to mess up the ride of a unitized body.
It may also not be noticeable by eye.

[alicia]

Yes it was wrecked slightly, I can tell that the front bumper was replaced and the radiator but no frame damage. The thing that bugs me is we never noticed the 50 mph+ vibration until lately. We bought it with 46,000 miles and have driven it everywhere on long trips but I honestly don’t feel comfortable driving it out of town much less on a trip.

[alicia]

Well I chose to take the car to another tire shop today before giving up on it and trading it off. The tire shop was nothing special, just a 3 bay garage with a heavy duty tire balance machine. In fact I was very skeptical and the workers were just a bunch of country boys (no offense to country people) The lead technician couldn’t even talk plain, I barely understood him . So I told him the problem and everything I have tried. He seemed hopeful but also seemed unsure. He drove the car and came back and said that he thought it was a balance problem. I thought well shoot what a waste of time this had turned out to be, but I let him proceed. He took all four wheels off and re-balancd and indexed them several times, and after each time he would drive the car. To my surprise the “country” technician got almost ALL of the vibration out, at least to an acceptable point. Feels like normal road vibration now. I canNOT believe that a couple country boys with a normal balance machine did what college educated “techs” couldn’t do with their ten’s of thousands of dollar equipment. He told me the rest was because the tires were cheap. Lesson learned!

[Author]

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