C'mere you fucking car. You have this coming !

My van. My fun nice enjoyable 2001 Nissan Quest Minivan in champagne with running boards. I pit thee. Thou has turned thine back upon me.

I am driving down the highway out on a trip of about 100 miles. I’m 10 minutes from home yesterday. I feel shuddering in the wheels. Violent shuddering.

I’d been parked on snow at an angle and thought maybe I had snow or ice in the wheels. I pulled over, backed up and stopped short to get ice or snow out of the calipers, wheels, etc.

I get out on the road, pay a toll and am accelerating out of the toll. At 50-55, the shuddering returns and a few seconds later, the wheels lock. I start sliding fast, rotating around and around at 55 mph. I do two 360s, looking at cars bearing down on me before I slide off the highway into the guard rail. Backwards.

The right nose of my van is IN the right lane of the highway. I grab flairs, get out so I don’t get killed when some fool plows into the van. Set flairs in the right lane about 30 yards apart, call 911 and wait.

I am so fortunate. Nobody else was involved. If the road had been dry, the car would have jerked to the left when the wheels locked and then started rolling over. It was so slippery with slush, I just spun.

Now, there seems to be NOTHING WRONG. Come ON you fucking van- show your stuff so it can be fixed. My mechanic says that because I parked on a steep sidwards slope for 24 hours the day before, I might have gotten air bubbles in the steering fluid lines. Why this would only show a problem at 50 mph is beyond me, and WHY it would cause violent shuddering even if I was going straight is beyond me. They drained and replaced the power steering fluid, tightened the belt.

And I am just so fucking sure this will happen again at speeds. What the hell. They found nothing? These guys are good, I’ve used them for years. They do the work, they try different things, etc. If I get out on the highway and this locks up again, well. If I live I’ll be VERY pissed.

Anyone ever heard of this? Vibration and steering/ wheel lock due to air bubbles in the power steering lines?

Fuck. Frightening. Goddamned car. BEHAVE !!!

:mad:

Cartooniverse

I’ve heard of something similar - an apparent steering lock after driving through a puddle. Turns out the splash had made the belt giving the power to the power steering slip. Though it felt like the steering had locked, it was just the loss of this power. The car was still steerable, it just suddenly needed ten times as much strength to do so. Perhaps the belt couldn’t handle high speeds, hence the problem only manifests at 50 mph.

If the belt was one of the factors, your mechanics’ tightening it might have solved the problem, though they might not have understood why.

I’m by no means nor am I claiming to be an expert.

When you say the wheels locked do you mean they stopped spinning or you just couldn’t turn? Cause if they stopped spinning you have other issues other than the power steering. I thought it might be your front bearings at first. Wobbling at speed sounds weird though, like you’ve got a hellish bearing problem or a bunch of loose lugs or something with the caliper/brake. I can’t envision the power steering causing any of this.

I’ve no help for you. Just wanted to say that I had the same sort of thing happen on my 18th birthday. The brakes went out on my vehicle twice and I ended up plowing down a sign. When the vehicle was towed, the brakes were A-OK.

Maybe you should page Rick. Isn’t he the resident technician?

I have no idea what’s wrong with your car - just wanted to say that reading about your little adventure gave me the heebie-jeebies.

Don’t go dying in a car crash, please.

It’s not a power steering problem if I am reading the OP correctly. If the car became hard to steer, it is probably a power steering problem. A vibration at 55 is not a power steering problem. Nor is spinning around in circles.
Air in the line from parking on a slope? Go ahead pull the other one, it has bells on it.
:rolleyes:
Based on the spin, either a front wheel or a rear wheel locked up, or had some serious issue with continuing to rotate at the same speed as the other three. Couple that with the severe vibration before the spin and my money is on a front drive axle constant velocity joint that has taken a shit.

The way I am reading this, the back end of the van swung to the right, so that you were looking at the center divider out of the windshield before you went the rest of the way around, and started looking at where you had been. If this is correct, I would bet it is the driver’s side axle. If the van rotated the other way (clockwise when viewed from the top) look at the passenger side axle first.
It could also be a wheel bearing, but I think based on what I have read here a CV joint is more likely.

Air in the power steering lines will not cause this. There is a suspension issue of some kind. You have a bad balljoint, or a severely out of balance tire, or a strut which has come loose, or a suspension busing or multiples thereof that have failed.This will happen again. Get it resolved.

Any chance it was a differential problem? Just guessing.

If your tire/s stopped rotating like the brakes had been slammed on and your mechanic said it was probably from air bubbles in the steering fluid, it’s time to get a new mechanic.

Let’s just say that I had a dose of viewing parts of the side of the road from an angle that one is not supposed to view them on Sunday. The good news in my case is that it was a problem caused partially by snow on the road, and mostly by an idiot driver. (The idiot driver in question is me. So, there is no guarentee that it won’t happen again, but at least I have some ideas what caused the situation, and will try to drive more caustiously in the snow).

It’s lupus.

It’s never lupus.

You are reading the description accurately. I believe you, and yet drove the car last night ( I had no choice, and believed my mechanic at the time ). Once a C.V. joint shits, how can it operate perfectly? I drove at 55-60 mph for a while. Not long, but zero vibration felt.

I’m feeling like I need to take it to someone else to have it looked at. Though I must say, this shop has always done good work and I’ve been taking vehicles there for 12 + years.

The tires did not stop rotating. As near as I can remember ( adrenaline, fear, etc. ) I lost control but the wheels did keep turning. As said, I lost power steering but was able to steer manually hard as that is to do.

Utterly freaked about driving my ride now…

Thanks, FCM. It wasn’t my day to die.

Any vehicle that sent me into 360 degree spins would really need to prove itself to me before I drove it again. Unless you’re strapped for money I would pre-emptively throw some parts at at, whether problems are found or not.

I know brakes can cause violent shuddering in the wheels. Could it be something wacky in the ABS system?

It’s sad really. 12 years is a long time to go to realize that your mechanic is from another planet. This seems worse to me than random over charging. Your safety is at risk, and it sounds like he doesn’t have a clue.

A CV joint- once it fails is uaully done for good. And they usually show their worst trouble when they are turned hard. Shuddering is *usually * suspension, brakes, or wheel/tire imbalance, with CV joint a possible (but unlikely) last.

Your vehicle- IIRC- has struts. Struts mean no upper balljoint, but a lower one. And a bad lower can be masked at low speeds, and only show up at higher speeds when a harmonic causes it to wobble excessively. At some point, it can come loose and cause the wheel to slam hard to the left or right, causeing the trouble you reported. Good news is, the balljoint is a $20 item. Replacement not too expensive. Just get it fixed soon.

Well, they haven’t been my sole mechanic all of that time. I took it to the Other Guy In Town. ( O.G.I.T.) Told him the circumstances. He checked it out. Informed me that I’d had ice packed into the rear wheel. It caused the vibration at higher speeds and caused the wheel to lock momentarily.

Told me the last time a customer came in with violent shuddering after an icy snowy storm when the guy had parked up off the road, he put it up on the lift and found ice packed into the wheel.

Total cost for fixing that car? 3 gallons of hot water.

I thanked him and left.

I then stopped by Jim’s place. He’s doing the auto body work. He also does rebuilds and radiators. I used to ride on the ambulance corps with him. ( Indicates trust and sanity, not to mention a lovely small-town touch. :smiley: ) Without telling him ANYTHING about what O.G.I.T. said, I laid out the story. Jim immediately said, " Oh, you had ice in your wheel and since the rear wheels don’t get NEARLY as hot as the front since the car is front wheel drive, the ice doesn’t fall away as easily. I’ve seen that before."

:rolleyes:

I drove it several times today on the highway. Perfect handling. The fact that two other mechanics I’ve worked with over the years had the identical immediate reaction tells me something. It tells me that the goddamned counter lady at The First Place didnt’ say jack shit to the mechanics in the bay about the tale I related. She probably said, " Check the front end for problems, he spun out and crashed". They only found lousy-looking power steering fluid because by then the goddamned ice had been knocked away by the force of the impact.

Ice. In the wheels. I drove to the fucking car wash and jetted very hot water into the wheels and wheel wells. And drove home.

If, OTOH, I die while driving to South Jersey on Thursday to do a demo, it has been really fabulous working with you all.

EDTA: billy if it was the ball joint, wouldn’t I have felt it as I drove and turned in the last 2 days? A mechanical failure doesn’t ease up. It simply fails and metal breaks. No? Rather, once it has slammed to once side, would it re-seat or re-set itself so that there was zero indication of the failed ball joint?

p.s. Are you the same billy rubin whose letter to Cecil is printed in one of the books, and at whose expense Cecil made a few cracks because your letter to him was about the color of feces?

Have you tried giving it a damn good thrashing?

The Italian Tuneup, you mean?

Exactly what I thought when I saw this thread title.

(Fast-forward to 1:05, ignore the silly Planet of the Apes stuff at the end)