i own a civic and love it but, this is a problem on one of my other cars. I also have a 2002 mazda protege5 and its lowerd with 17's. my car steering wheel shakes like crazy at 60mph and on. whats the deal how do i get it to stop and be a smoother ride. ive already checked the tire pressure etc. any ideas and how much to get fixed or what the problem is if i were to take it to a shop?

 

well first off have all 4 wheels ballanced and if that doesnt take care of it rotate the tires front to back, and if that doesnt take care of it look into alignment.

those are comonly the 2 problems that can cause vibrations when driving

 

most likely your wheels needs to be balanced or you need an alignment. i would start with getting the wheels balanced. or if you have never gotten an alignment since you lower your car then, get that done. that should fix the problem

 

o ya you could also inspect the tires. but the alignment shop should look at them when they ballance them.

my dads truck had several bubbled spots of the tires thread which threw of the ballance and vibrated the truck at higher speeds.

 

Another possibility is that the brake rotors are warped, that caused vibrations for me in the past. The rotors would have to be machined, or replaced depending on the material left.

 

well warped rotors usually only vibrate when your braking.

 

on my old 17's I hit a coupe potholes that messed up some of the rims, so neither balancing or an alignment helped, but if your rims are good, then surely one or both of those will fix your problem

 

then i think your wheel balance people dont know how to do there job!!!! they should be able to look at the wheel when its spinning to see if its bent. you can see the tire not spinning true.
on my impalas steelies when i got new tires on it they showed me that 3 of my wheels where bent and you could see the wheels shaking while spinning.

you probably just had a douche on the wheel balancer. which ive had happen plenty of times with my old civics wheels. one thing i learned NEVER go when highschool is out. and watch the guys that do the work UP CLOSE and ask them to double check the balance!
ive noticed that most of the time when they balance they just give it 1 spin and put the weights on where the machine tells them to and they pull the wheel off and do the next.
and thats crap is not good enough! they just guess they got it right.

i had my 17s balanced 4times and the last time i complained like a **** to the manager and he personally balanced the wheels and double checked them and did a great job.

 

It might also be because your wheels do not have the required hub spacer. A hun-centric wheel that does not have the proper spacer will vibrate excessively. Also, another thing to check is each front suspension component. A worn part can cause vibration.