1976 Eldorado front end shimmy at 30 mph?

[south280]

Hi,  When my eldorado reaches 30mph the front end starts to shimmy especially the driver's side and goes away at 40 mph.  Do I need a wheel alignment?  tire balancing?  The car has 1200 orig miles, I drive the car about 2 miles a week and the tires are about 3 years old.   Any advice would be great  Thanks

[76eldo]

I’d get the front wheels balanced.
Be forwarded that you need specific CAX style wheel weights which have a special drop down tab that leaves room for the hub caps to grab.
Also I would remove and replace the hubcaps on your own because of the possibility of some dumb kid mistreating your very special white caps.

Also mark which rim the cap came off of worn a sharpie on the rear of the cap. They are a fussy fit.
Make sure they are tapped in all the way with a rubber mallet and try to pull them off by hand to make sure that they are on tight enough.

[David King (kz78hy)]

It seems simple, but ensure your tire pressure is inflated to specs.  My old Aurora would shimmy when the tire pressure dropped low and that was signal to fill up the tires...damned aluminum wheels and wheel to tire corrosion.

[hornetball]

2 miles a week?  That's abusive.  You need to at least get the oil up to temperature on every drive if you can.  You are also never bringing the tires up to temperature, so you can expect them to be out of round.

[TJ Hopland]

Ya hopefully that 2 miles was a typo,  that is a real short trip. 

These are real sensitive to the tire balance so you need a good shop with a good machine and a good tech,  2 out of 3 is pretty tough these days so not a lot of chance of finding all 3 in the same place.    The CAX weights seem to really help over trying to just use inside weights but stick on ones stuck on by a good tech should work too 

Have someone have a good look at the CV axles,  boots and lube could have failed at which point it doesn't take many miles to destroy them.    Originally one of them had what they called a torsional damper in it which is about the size of a soda can and contains rubber.  Most of them got removed long before now so we don't really know what they are like at this age but maybe it has failed and is causing this issue.   That damper was why there was originally a left and right shaft listed otherwise they are the same. 

These cars are also really hard on lower ball joints and wheel bearings.  Sure you apparently got low miles but this may be a case where the low miles is hurting things because of all the sitting.   Wheel bearings are easy to check just jack the wheel off the ground and see if it wiggles.   Ball joints are a little harder to check but not really different from any other car.