Shimmy at steering wheel

I just replace control arms on my e36 318ti, 161,000 miles.

Most of the shimmy was fixed and a tire rebalance help even more.

I still have noticable shimmy at the wheel driving straight, not bad but it is there.

Any ideas on where to start looking? There is no tie rod play and sway bar links pass a visual check for wear as do the sway bar bushings.

How many miles do your shocks and/or front control arm bushings have on them?

I will need to check on the shocks they might be original. I just did the control arm and bushing. Thanks.

I suppose when we talk about shocks it is usually shocks and struts both.

If your shocks/struts are original, my hunch would be that's your problem. I would also check the upper strut bearings (hats) to see what kind of shape they are in. I developed a shimmy on one of my E36's that I could not get rid of! All new bushings, new/different wheels & tires and it still had a shimmy. New struts and it's steady as a rock. Mine had 80K+ miles so it was definitely time. A pretty common school of thought is that they have lived out most of their useful life at about 60K miles. At 161K they are WAY past due!

Thanks I appreciate the help. I will check out those hats if I can figure out how, I also have a blower motor to worry about but with two other repairs going on at the same time I will have to prioritize. My little 318ti goes 2 miles per day with a couple longer drives per month for exercise. I just want it to be right if I can afford it.

Just for poops and giggles, you may want to swap front tires to the rear, if you haven't already, just to see if that is the cause. BTW, the heater case setup on the ti is different from the regular E36s, and I can't remember if the Bently manual covers it or not.

Yeah I have been into the blower area and the resistor pack is in there. The supplier sent me the wrong res pack for the ti so I sent it back.

There is not alot of info on the net to find the res pack on the e36 318ti.

I will wait for spring for that one.

the diagrams at realoem.com are pretty helpful

If you haven't done it already, be sure to check out www.318ti.org as well. It's a wealth of information relating to the ti.