G'day all, just after a bit of advice. I was on the freeway on the weekend in my 96 Fairlane Ghia and noticed the steering wheel started to shake quite a bit at about 100km/h. Once I slowed down to about 90km/h and then went back up to about 105km/h it was fine. Would this just be wheel alignment?

its either going to be
tyres
wheels out of balance
wheel allingment

9 out of 10 times it will be that your front and possibly rear wheels are out of balance causing the whole body to shake then will shake everything else.

i doubt it would be the allingment because the allingment is basically making the car drive dead straight not so much in vibration stopping.

if you have noise or uneven tread on the tyres that will cause the car to vibrate but not severely

Could be wheel bearings and or Discs too?

wheel bearings arent going to make a big vibration.
bearings (depending on which ones) will make a loud knocking noise when going round corners thats the most they will usually do.
and with the discs the only way for them to make vibrations is if they are severely warped.

Hi Mattyt

Had similar issue with my 1997 Fairlane. Due to the large offset in the mag wheels for this NL series we found that uneven wheel nut tension caused distortion of the rim center. Although the wheels were balanced, using a cone centering system, when the wheels were mounted on the hub using the average garage air gun, tension varied between 75 - 135ft/lb on one rim alone. As a result of this uneven tension the wheels would be distorted off center or pulled off square to the hub thus giving our random and vibrations.

Just recently we had some work done on the Fairlane and I failed to check if the garage used a tension wrench when fixing the wheels, their answer was no and thus on our drive to Rainbow Beach this week the vibrations returned.

You will find a directive from the Queensland Government to their mining department inspectors and vehicle maintainence departments regarding wheel failure and issues relating to the use of 'air guns' to tighten magnesium wheels to vehicles carrying dangerous or hazardous materials due to a history of mag wheel failures.

Our technique is to secure the car, loosen the wheel nuts and re-face the wheel onto the hub, then using wheel brace firm the wheel to the hub, then using a tension wrench bring the wheel nuts up to 75ft/lb [twice] then finally tensioning the wheel nuts to the required 85ft/lb. This is done on each wheel in turn ensuring that the wheel is first loosened and re-faced to the hub.

Hope this suggestion helps.

Regards,
Kh