Steering / Suspension problem.

[Jitsukablue]

Howdy all,
I've increasingly noticed that any pothole / uneven road surface is now shaking the steering wheel when I drive. What's the likely cause of this? Knackered shocks or worse? When I go in for the warranty recall for the ubolts on the rear axle I'll get them to look at it but wanted to hear from some real experts on this site!
The wheel seems to shake in the same maner in which you turn it, ie not the whole steering column, although its hard to tell, could be a bit of that too. Any ideas?

[Greedy]

If you're still on stock shocks, I would lean toward that being the problem. Mine is a lot since the suspension has been upgraded.

[slimv6]

HI,

Feels like an oscillation of some sort? My shocks were done at about 50k, cause they were shot. I'm on about 87000km at the mo with a new set of rubber and suspension on the way. Used to be all over the show with the bad ones, the new ones were better, but not phenomenally... Iron Man on the cards.

(BTW, what size rubber do you have on? )

s.

[Adz]

You might wanna check your tyre pressure as well Jits, I know this was the main cause of my steering wheel shaking all over the place....just an idea anyway.

[Homer]

Mine was from shocks and high tyre pressure.
Lowering the pressure got rid of most of it and the shocks fixed it completely - but mine was more what I call 'bump steering.' If that is what you have, lowering your pressure to say 30psi (for a test) will let you know. If it fixes it, go up until it starts again.
My stockies run between 32 and 36 to reduce it.

BTW, the standard front shocks you can compress and pull back out with your hands with hardly any strain I was amazed when they came out - they look like toy shocks (smaller than my very first Yammy YZ80 )
A glorified bonnet strut!!!

[King Triton]

Jitsukablue

I have been having a similar problem, if i was driving on a highway 80-110km that was not smooth the steering would shake form side to side each time you hit a bump and if you hit enough of them one after the other the shaking would not stop it would continue. Not sure if this is similar to yours.
Anyway i had a roation done recently and asked them to make sure the tyres were balanced properly and that has fixed it.
When you go to the larger tyre you will be prone to more tyre & wheel shudder add to this a tyre or tyres that are not quite balanced properly and you hit a bump and the tyre slighlt squishes out of shape and puts the balancing out even more and the steering wheel will start to shake.

[Greedy]

BTW, the standard front shocks you can compress and pull back out with your hands with hardly any strain I was amazed when they came out - they look like toy shocks (smaller than my very first Yammy YZ80 )
A glorified bonnet strut!!!

What he said. They're disgraceful IMO.

[sam]

Compared them against a BT 50 the other day and they look puny compared to the Mazda.

I reckon they raided a toy store/wharehouse so some poor little kids are missing out now

[Homer]

Jitsukablue

I have been having a similar problem, if i was driving on a highway 80-110km that was not smooth the steering would shake form side to side each time you hit a bump and if you hit enough of them one after the other the shaking would not stop it would continue. Not sure if this is similar to yours.
Anyway i had a roation done recently and asked them to make sure the tyres were balanced properly and that has fixed it.
When you go to the larger tyre you will be prone to more tyre & wheel shudder add to this a tyre or tyres that are not quite balanced properly and you hit a bump and the tyre slighlt squishes out of shape and puts the balancing out even more and the steering wheel will start to shake.

haha Greedy I love your new avatar!

Back on subject, what KT writes here isn't what I had. His is the old big tyre syndrome I think, mates Hilux used to do it when his really big tyres were worn or out of balance.

When I say bump steering, I mean driving along and you hit some bumps/ruts or rough road and the steering doesn't really shake that much, rather the car stutters and changes direction slightly, skitters across the road. Once the bumps are gone it is immediately back to normal - except you are a foot or so off line one way or the other to where you started. That is all tyre pressure and shocks.

[Greedy]

haha Greedy I love your new avatar!

Cheers Homer. Thumbs up hey!

[Dylan 191]

haha Greedy I love your new avatar!

Back on subject, what KT writes here isn't what I had. His is the old big tyre syndrome I think, mates Hilux used to do it when his really big tyres were worn or out of balance.

When I say bump steering, I mean driving along and you hit some bumps/ruts or rough road and the steering doesn't really shake that much, rather the car stutters and changes direction slightly, skitters across the road. Once the bumps are gone it is immediately back to normal - except you are a foot or so off line one way or the other to where you started. That is all tyre pressure and shocks.[/quote]

mine did just the same as that the other day on corragated gravel road
was moving all over the road and i only got 2000ks on it
shocks from standard must be crap !!!

[FreestyleCab]

I get the steering wheel moving in my hands whenever the tyres hit a bump/pothole. My new suspension did reduce the effect a bit, reducing the trye pressure also reduces it, but I think with my 10ply Cooper STT's the effect will always be there due to the stiffer sidewalls of the tyre.

We have a new 08 singlecab ML at work and I took it for a run today and didn't get any of the steering wheel feedback....it is stock ATM. It will be interesting to see if the Cooper ATRs that are going on it tomorrow will have any effect.

[Jitsukablue]

Thanks for the input guys, I'm running 235/85/16 D694s. It was doing it at 32 PSI, and since then I've put them up to 40PSI and am getting noticeably better fuel economy. They are relatively new too, so have been rotated at 5K, and now every 10K.

It could be the strong side walls as FSC says. Keep me updated FSC if the coopers cause the same problem.

I also got the skitting on gravel roads on standard tyres even with reduced pressure.
King, that sounds identicle to the problem you speak of, so perhaps it's just a tyre charaterisitic combined with crap shocks.

Greedy, that avatar is gold, I'm going to put that in my wallet so every time I open I can have a smirk.

[FreestyleCab]

I also got the skitting on gravel roads on standard tyres even with reduced pressure.

Yep, thats from the non existant damping of the "seen bigger on a mountain bike" shocks that Mitsubishi puts on all new Tritons.
I don't know why I didn't replace at least the rears from day one.

[ongteckweng]

Howdy all,
I've increasingly noticed that any pothole / uneven road surface is now shaking the steering wheel when I drive. What's the likely cause of this? Knackered shocks or worse? When I go in for the warranty recall for the ubolts on the rear axle I'll get them to look at it but wanted to hear from some real experts on this site!
The wheel seems to shake in the same maner in which you turn it, ie not the whole steering column, although its hard to tell, could be a bit of that too. Any ideas?

g'day...i am David from Malaysia and i have the same prob with my Triton. according to my service center, its due to the joints of the steering column. had them changed recently and the problem is gone! there r few joints on the steering column n its hard to pin point which one is the culprit hence Mitsubishi Malaysia got them changed the whole lot, steering column + connector.

after changing the column, the steering feels more solid, no more shaking go thru uneven road surface. btw, im using BFG A/T 265/75/16 (clocked 60,000km with them). hope this help

[slimv6]

tomorrow's the day for IM susp setup, getting rid of the BFG and putting some bridgestone muddies on. feedback to follow

[Jitsukablue]

g'day...i am David from Malaysia and i have the same prob with my Triton. according to my service center, its due to the joints of the steering column. had them changed recently and the problem is gone! there r few joints on the steering column n its hard to pin point which one is the culprit hence Mitsubishi Malaysia got them changed the whole lot, steering column + connector. after changing the column, the steering feels more solid, no more shaking go thru uneven road surface. btw, im using BFG A/T 265/75/16 (clocked 60,000km with them). hope this help

Thanks David, that'll help a lot, I'll get them to have a look when the U-Bolts get replaced under recall.

[ongteckweng]

g'day...i am David from Malaysia and i have the same prob with my Triton. according to my service center, its due to the joints of the steering column. had them changed recently and the problem is gone! there r few joints on the steering column n its hard to pin point which one is the culprit hence Mitsubishi Malaysia got them changed the whole lot, steering column + connector. after changing the column, the steering feels more solid, no more shaking go thru uneven road surface. btw, im using BFG A/T 265/75/16 (clocked 60,000km with them). hope this help

Thanks David, that'll help a lot, I'll get them to have a look when the U-Bolts get replaced under recall.

no worries mate

[mothman]

I've done 135k in my 06ML , replaced the standard suspension at 90K with OME set up - & still haven't had any steering column issues .
Who should I complain to??

But seriously - "love that car"

Cheers

[Buzzy]

Thx for that mothman, good to here your truck is treating you well.

[Buzzy]

I removed everything out of this thread and left this by benji

My power steering broke down by the side of the road precisely one month after I bought the car which as you can imagine when you have just handed over $45k of your hard earned, is extremely disappointing. I've had problems with the ECU causing the diesel engine to surge and have flat spots, replacement intake manifold and EGR valve, gearbox problems and all the replacements to the steering system I detailed in the last post. My dealer has been excellent, but the company as a whole leaves a lot to be desired especially in the way they treat their customers.

Thats being constructive benji thx. Getting on a Triton website and bagging them is not.
This is all you needed to post in the first place

[benji25]

I removed everything out of this thread and left this by benji

My power steering broke down by the side of the road precisely one month after I bought the car which as you can imagine when you have just handed over $45k of your hard earned, is extremely disappointing. I've had problems with the ECU causing the diesel engine to surge and have flat spots, replacement intake manifold and EGR valve, gearbox problems and all the replacements to the steering system I detailed in the last post. My dealer has been excellent, but the company as a whole leaves a lot to be desired especially in the way they treat their customers.

Thats being constructive benji thx. Getting on a Triton website and bagging them is not.
This is all you needed to post in the first place

So whats the point of having a forum to discuss Triton related issues and topics if you can only discuss the nice ones, and your posts are censored because they don't conform to the personal opinion of one person? Like I said last time, the thread is called 'Steering / Suspension problem' so I assumed that this is the place that you can discuss exactly that. Is this a Chinese democracy? Buzzy, you deleted everything that might help out someone else having steering problems, what's the point? I guess this one will get deleted too...

[Buzzy]

Benji your not making sense mate.
As you can clearly see I left everthing that you posted that was constructive, negative or not.
It is great information that you have given thats why I left it.
Obviously you havent read much of the forum if you think we only post positive things about the cars.
Its pretty much all negative things and little problems, thats what these types of forums do. Someone jumps on to find out information about a problem their having, Its not often people get on here to say how peachy everything is. Only problem I had with your origional post is the fact you found it necessary to state and I quote "There sh!t cars, even sh!ter company". Saying stuff like that in a Triton forum will always get a response like mine, especially since its your first post. How is this helping?
As I said thankyou for letting us know what problems you have had. We all totaly agree with you about MMA customer service its absolutly crap! We have a mile of threads talking about this. You have obviously had a bad run out of your vehicle which is not good to here but the majority of people on this website love their trucks and wouldnt own anything else. I hope whatever you get next you have more luck with.

Thats the end of it now lets get back on topic