Originally Posted by andrewwynn

I've had a mystery shudder in my steering for a long time. It would be most obvious during gentle braking near 50 mph which screams wishbone control arm (side vs. front). I even bought an OEM set to install but then wife's X5 developed the same issue but 10x worse so I put the arms on her car since mine was intemittent anyhow.

How a ball joint cures itself for many months at a time is still a mystery.

Anyhow my moron mechanic* didn't replace a torn CV boot and that of course led to outer CV joint failure and other than crunchy left turns it also would cause steering wobble once in a great while.

Meanwhile the left front wheel bearing went out so I finally got enough fire lit under my ass to fix a bunch of shit and when I took out the bearing I noticed there was play in the bearing left/right which could have been the source of that mystery wobble. Additional evidence is the left front brake pads were far far more worn which would align with grabby brake causing steering shimmy and also bearing not rigid allowing the rotor to wobble going though the caliper.

New axle installed into refurbished hub, new rotor installed about to install the new pads and I can finally have fully functioning brakes. Wait until you see the state of the old left pads!



Zoom in; there is pad material on the worn pad! There is about 3x as much on the right side pads. Enough left I'll toss in the trunk in case something similar happens in the future. I will also check the right front pads occasionally since no sensor over there. I'm considering adding one in if I can figure out if I need to wire in series or parallel. Now that I've personally experienced one side wearing far far faster than the other.