Just looking for some advice on how to diagnose a front end vibration? I recently got a 06 g35x from an auction and when I go 50km/h I start to to feel a vibration/shuddering from the front driver side wheel area. The car drives straight I can let go of the steering wheel and it doesn’t pull either direction the brakes work normally there’s no noises while I turn it doesn’t make any other noises or do anything else out of the ordinary. I haven’t taken the car past 60ish km/h yet but it seems like it gets worse as speed increases, I shifted the car into neutral while it was making the noise and it didn’t change I thought maybe the wheel was unbalanced but I switched the front tires around and nothing changed. I’ve done a lot of diy work on cars but not much with suspension I jacked the front wheels up off the ground and checked for play on the wheels and there was no up and down play but there was a little side to side play on both the front wheels, I put it in neautral and spun the tires and the bearings didn’t make any noise just a slight scraping from the brakes which in pretty sure is normal, I noticed the cv boot on my passenger side is torn but the noise is on the driver side so I don’t think that’s the cause. Any advice on how to diagnose this would be appreciated. My next idea is to jack all the wheels up off the ground and place the car securely on jack stands and have someone drive it 50 km/h so I can look/listen where the noise is coming from

 

Inspect the CV axles for any play up/down or forward/backward. Probably end up being an axle but you should still have the tires balanced

 

Thank you for the advice. Do you know if it’s okay to drive the car on jack stacks? It won’t hurt anything as long as I have the car securely on stands? I figure if I do that I’ll probably be able to see or hear exactly where it’s coming from

 

So I just went and checked the axles and the driver side has a little bit of play in and out, the passenger side where the torn boot is has a ton of play it actually rattles if I wiggle it in and out it’s also got a little play side to side. The vibration seems to come from the driver side though, if it was caused by the play in the axles don’t you think id get noise on the passenger side too cause the passenger side axle is way worse? This has me stumped

 

Play in-out is normal, the CV axle is designed exactly for that, as the suspension travels down the distance between the transaxle and wheel hub becomes larger so the CV joint makes up the difference.

You want to check for play up-down and front-back, if those are solid it's probably not the issue.

I would still take the car in to have the wheels rebalanced just to rule it out, even though you swapped wheels on the front you should still have it checked. It's possible the entire front is shaking but you're only feeling it from one side.

If you have a torn passenger boot then the axle is on it's way out anyway, I would just replace it.

As for driving the car on jackstands, it's definitely not recommended however I do it all the time so... make sure to only use the approved jack points on the sides of the vehicle, it's easy to find because there are two "notches" in the pinch weld where the jack goes. Don't ever get under the car, or in front/behind the car. Buy a large handheld mirror, attach it to a broom handle (Home depot has various brackets you can use so you have a pivoting head at the end), use the mirror and a flashlight (shoot the flashlight at the mirror to bounce light onto what you're inspecting).

I've violated almost all those rules I listed in the past so yes I'm a bit of a hypocrite here, just be safe.

 

Thanks so much for the advice. I’m not worried about the car coming off the stands I always give the vehicle a good shake by hand while it’s on jack stands to make sure it’s secure. I just wanted to be sure it’s safe for the car and not bad for the transmission or something to drive it with no friction on the wheels. I’ll give it a try and report back.
As for the axles there’s only a little bit of side/side play on the passenger side.

 

Have you checked the front driveline? I think one of the u-joints was prone to failure but I don't get under many AWD G35, that's just what I've heard. Also typically a front driveshaft will be 2 piece so it can slip a little in/out and typically there are a couple points that need to be greased on those driveshafts. May or may not apply to the G but worth looking for.

Front vibration on a Tacoma is almost always lack of grease on the front driveshaft so it can be a fairly common issue on some vehicles. Usually G front vibrations are either dragging calipers, tires, things like that.

 

So I gave this test a try and the car didn’t want to shift of out 1st. It’s an auto but I put it in sport or manual mode or whatever and shifted to 2 and it just automatically shifted back to 1 and my abs, slip, and vdc lights came on so I got scared I hurt something and took it off the stands and went for a drive and the lights turned off and all was well except for the dreaded noise I can’t diagnose 😂 I checked the drive shafts while the car was on the stands and they didn’t seem to have any play. This was only my 4th or 5th time driving the car and this time i was really lisenting to see where the noise was coming from and I got it up to 90 km/h and I didn’t even notice the noise, it seemed like it only did it between 40-60 km/h and the worst at 50. The exhaust is also a lil loud and the rpms were high on the car so maybe the exhaust was just drowning out the noise. I want to bring it on the highway and see what happens but I don’t have insurance on it yet and also don’t want to drive it anywhere I can’t push it home from in case it breaks down 😂

 

Yeah on jackstands your AWD and traction control is going to engage because it thinks you're slipping tires on the rear. You can eliminate the throttle cut (what's keeping you in 1st gear) by turning off the traction control (might have to pull the relay, not sure if just using the dash button will still kick the throttle cut at some point. AWD is still going to kick in regardless though unless you pull it's relay as well but then the front tires won't spin.

You're definitely not hurting anything though, it's just the safety tech on the car thinking you're on ice and spinning the rear tires.

 

Okay sweet. I’ll give it another try and disable traction control this time. Awd kicking in is all good with me because I want the front spinning sense the noise is up front it probably won’t make the noise if the front doesn’t spin

 

finally got some free time and going to give this another try. What relay do I pull? Is it #82 inside the fuse box under the hood?

 

Ok I checked the one line diagram and it's not a relay, that fuse 82 in the IPDM will disable it AND a bunch of other stuff so I wouldn't use that one.

It looks like fuse 22 in Fuse Block - J/B (cabin fuse box) should work to disable it though, alternately you can just unplug the transfer case while the car is up in the air.

 

I looked it up and isn’t fuse 22 for awd control system? I want to disable the traction control not the all wheel drive