MX-3.com

ok. up to 60mph we're good. get to about 70mph+ and the steering wheel (ONLY the steering wheel) starts to shake quite bad.

NOW.....i let off the throttle quickly, and the shakes get VERY BAD.

NEW
passenger wheel bearing
passenger ball joint
driver/passenger cv


I replaced them based on a "visual failure". but the usual ball-joint and wheel bearing tests showed NO PLAY. everything that I have tried feels tight, including the tie rod ends.

I also tried rotating tires front to back to see if there would be a difference, and also tried taking a completely different set of wheels/tires off of a friends car. NO IMPROVEMENT.

thinking about taking it in for an alignment now, as I know for a fact that the alignment is off, just not sure how much.

could an alignment issue really cause the steering wheel/front end to shake like that at 70, and get worse when quickly letting off the throttle at that point???

oh yes the aligment would do something like that. I had put 25mm wheel spacers on my MX3 and under around 100km everything would be fine but once i got on the autobahn it was like an earth quake in the car the radio would come out the din it was wild. With the spacers still on front and rear got an alignment and i was smooth sailing from then on out.

Get your wheels Balanced

Motor mounts maybe? If throttle affects it so obviously, it'd be worth checking them.

Brakes dragging, warped rotors, just a couple of causes

Get an alignment first... If you think it's off, chances are it's worse than you think it is. I had far worse symptoms than this, and threw money at it for months, replacing everything I could think of... Turns out my alignment was off by more than 3 degrees in every category. If it doesn't fix your issue, it'll at least cross another item off the list, and more likely than not improve the quality of your daily driving.

I'd do that first...