08 Limited 4WD V8 Steering Wheel Vibration

[lemii]

Hi All-

Original owner of a 2008 T4R Limited V8 4WD; vehicle has just over 122k miles on it and was used to tow a 5,000 lb. camper several times throughout the year from 2009 - 2019.

It has a slight vibration in the steering wheel that begins at about 63 MPH and stops at about 70 MPH. The vibration is not a visible shimmy of the steering wheel, just something you can feel with your hands. At times I do see an empty water bottle in the center console shake.

The vibration seems to diminish when on a slight curve, think interstate travel. Someone suggested that a bad torque converter clutch can exhibit these symptoms and my neighbor says he had very similar symptoms on his Jeep that turned out to be bad wheel bearings.

The tires are new and have been road-force balanced by two different shops twice each as I first though it might be tire balance related, however I did have similar symptoms with the old tires, I guess I just grew accustomed to it and ascribed the issue to the tires. When the new tires were installed the problem was still there, more noticeable I'm guessing because I fully expected it not to be. Make sense?

Anyway, what are some other potential causes of this symptom? I thought perhaps alignment, but the vehicle tracks beautifully on the interstate, not drawing to one side or the other.

Any other ideas?

Thanks.

 

[Whamola]

Mine was a combo of bad bearings and bad tires. While chasing this down, I also greased all the drive line points,. got an alignment, and put some shudderfix into the transmission because I have some vibration on the pedal around 1800rpm.

 

[lemii]

Well, I checked my front tires last night and could not detect any looseness in either the vertical or horizontal plane. So that suggests that the bearings may not be the issue. My next step will be a front end alignment.

 

[lemii]

Update:
Had the front end aligned, the toe was out by only 0.06 deg in the driver's side. That was all. I then had the shop rotate and roadforce balance all the tires using the fingers to ensure a lug-centric balance. They found one tire with an excessive roadforce value, which they said indicated a bad tire. They tried to spin that tire on the wheel and the best they could get was a value of 38.

I drove from there to Discount Tire where I purchased the tires on 31-Jan-2022; they had already replaced two tires that they found were bad on 10-Feb-2022. After making a call, the store manager replaced this tire as well! That has fixed the problem. I plan to go back to the shop that did the alignment and have them balance this new tire using the fingers to ensure a lug-centric balance.