NickTee

So I thought this might be an interesting story for those of you having a steering wheel vibration. I'll start ALLL the way from the beginning, as this is quite the tale.

Once upon a time... just kidding, I don't think I could maintain a fairy tale narrative that long. Anyway, it all started with a road force balance, another story that I have covered but it is part of this long tale. I had a small shake in the steering wheel that was very unbecoming of a Lexus, so I decided to bring the car in for a road force balance in hopes that it would precisely balance the car and rid me of the vibration. Upon doing this, I was informed that one of my almost new(they had maybe 2,000 miles on them) tires was bad. It was likely a bad belt, which the Hunter road force balance machine picked up. This is why I like road force balancing, as it can pick these things up. I also discovered I had a bent wheel in the rear, but I was lucky and was able to find a replacement wheel for only $100 locally. I had the bad tire replaced and the new wheel mounted and all was good. For a while

After 5,000 miles of driving, the steering wheel shake had come back slightly so I decided to do another road force balance. I hoped that this would take care of the slight steering wheel shake, which was a minor annoyance to me. I brought it in and one of the tires was bad again. These are Bridgestone Turanza Serenity Plus, they are not bad tires, so it was surprising to find another bad one. I let them replace it and received the car back. Little did I know the horrors to come. Upon driving it back home, I never exceeded 60mph. My daily commute is 64 miles going 75mph. I quickly discovered, the next day, that I had a horrendous pull. If I let go of the steering wheel for even 1-2 seconds, I would be halfway into the next lane. I didn't know what they had done to so severely screw up my car. I immediately stopped back and told them the story, so they roadforce balanced it again. This time the car pulled and shook so violently that something came loose in the b-pillar. This time I was furious when I returned, so the manager personally drove it at the same speeds that I commuted at. He came back and was also dismayed at the car's erratic vibration and pull. He decided to have someone drive me home and spent the next 6 hours testing things out and replacing tires. They even replaced the tires that they had replaced previously, telling me that they had replaced all four tires. I drove it and it slightly pulled with a minor vibration. I looked at the rear tires and noticed that they were still definitely the original tires that I had on there. I pointed this out to him, so he replaced the rear tires and road forced all four tires again.

This is a lot of information, but at this point I was sitting on four brand new tires that were made in 2015, they had done a minor alignment adjustment to the toe, and they had road force balanced the tires multiple times. At this point it would shimmy, track the road, and the steering wheel vibrated. At this point I was wondering if it could be engine mounts, tie rods, axle, control arm bushing, ball joint, etc. All parts that would be around $60 each and even worse if they didn't fix the issue. I know better than to play the "throw parts at the issue" game. Don't do that, it's expensive and it doesn't always fix the issue. Start with what you can do for free or near-free.

In this case, it was a near-free thing. What I did was I cleaned, deoxidized, and lubricated the caliper pins using caliper grease(one had corrosion on it and was difficult to remove) and I removed build-up and corrosion from the rotor mating surface, the wheel mating surface, and the axle hub making surface. I did so using a wire brush drill attachment, which easily cleaned up all the rust and brake crap that had steadily accumulated over the years. I went so far as to remove the rotor and cleaned the inside and outside of the rotor hat, then applied antiseize to all cleaned surfaces. After doing the front, it took me about 2 hours for both sides, I drove it. No more vibration. Whether it was the surfaces themselves or the calipers, I don't know. But the caliper pins should be regularly maintained regardless, so doing both simultaneously only made sense.

So if you're chasing down a vibration, make sure your wheel and rotor mating surfaces are corrosion and build-up free and that your caliper pins are nice and lubricated.

Coleroad

Good note. I pull the calipers once a year to clean the slides and lubricate them. Want to make sure my brakes are at their best. Sounds like yours were binding a bit.

NickTee

I don't believe it was the brakes, otherwise the issue would have been present prior to everything and would have also gotten worse directly after applying the brakes.
This is just a tip to make sure that you remove all the crap on your rotor hat and the wheel mating surfaces themselves. This is the problem with painting rotor hats, it may be applied unevenly and could cause a slight oscillation that translates into a steering wheel vibration.

poxifuke

Want to make sure my brakes are at their best. Sounds like yours were binding a bit.