Im hoping there are some suspension gurus here that can help me out on a front end vibration ive been chasing for a very looooong time.

Ever since we got our 56 sunliner it had a bad vibration.  At 52 mph, the front end starts to shimmy.  In fact, you can see the right front headlight/fender top going up & down.

Well, i had figured doing a frame off resto would have cured it.  With new floors in, al new suspension bushings, tie rods, shocks, springs, spring seats, sway bar bushings, ball joints, tires, rims and brake drums ..... and it is still there!  It isnt nearly as bad, but still somewhat there.

So last weekend i decided to try to chase it down.  I just replaced all 4 rims with new ones (welded vs. rivited), and had all 4 balanced.  I measured the lateral runout at the mounting face of the brake drum and it was 45 thousandths(!).  I re-indexed the brake drum (roatated it about 180 deg relative to the hub), and got it down to about 8 thousandths.  Thats weird too since I had the new drums cut with the spindle, and had kept them indexed as they were cut... but anyways.

Today i pulled it apart and repacked the wheel bearings, and tapped the inner races to ensure they were fully seated.  Put it all back together and got the lateral runout to 6 thousandths.  HOWEVER, the fore/aft runout (not sure of the term) is at 95 thousandths (although im not sure if that is a precise dimension, and i havent figured out how to measure if the lugs are that far out of whack, if that makes sense)

So the vibration is still there, although much less.  I did notice that when i spin the wheel it feels like it drags or tightens up at one point in the rotation, even after I adjusted the brakes out a bit to ensure they werent dragging.

Im relatively certain that at some point in its life the car was hit in the right front corner.  Im wondering if the front hub got knocked out of whack somehow?  Im not sure what else to look at/adjust/measure, etc.  I dont want to just go swapping parts, but what else to do?

One other thing that may offer a clue is that sometimes its worse than others.  As example, in a long high speed left hand sweeper, sometimes the front will start to shake after not doing it for a while.  Also, how tight is too tight on the front wheel retaining castle nut?  Ive read the shop manual, but everyone has a different interpretation of touch stuff (just start to feel drag...).

Anybody have any thoughts?  What did I miss or screw up?  Any thoughts are REALLY appreciated at this point, since im at my wits end!  Thanks!

Ron Grove

Wauconda, IL