swaying on freeway

[1996pontiac]

my car is swaying on the freeway, going about 60-70 mph. I have checked the sway bar and all other suspension parts and nothing is loose. I just changed the outer tie rod. Could this be it or what else do you think it could be?

[dpzelenak]

did you have it aligned after you changed the tie-rod?

[1996pontiac]

not yet. would that help? I have changed them before on other cars and nothing happend like that.

[dpzelenak]

it would probably fix it, most oem books call for it when you loosen suspension part and if your careful you can get away with it. but i would do it away just to make sure nothing is out of wack and wareing done anything else

[1996pontiac]

im going to get it done this weekend.

[1996pontiac]

advance auto says it could be the sway bar link. i cant find the sway bar linkage. where is it?

[dpzelenak]

yea it could be that to but you would have problem everywhere not just on the freeway, but there is always that problem when you put new parts with old parts, the linkage should be on the bottem of the steering knuckle and run though a bushing that is bolted to the subframe

[1996pontiac]

is it easy to change?

[dpzelenak]

yea its not that hard if you can change a tie rod then you should be fine but you will definitely need an alignment after(if) you change it

[1996pontiac]

ok. reasonible to buy, and does it go out?

[dpzelenak]

depends on wear you find it, if "Does it go out" you mean does it wear out and go bad then yea just like everything else, just a maintenance thing, whats your mileage on your car

[1996pontiac]

I have 124000 on my car .

[Dtrick22]

They are cheap, I'd do those before you get the alignment and even if it doesn't fix it they should have been done anyways considering the car is 15 years old

[1996pontiac]

They are cheap, I'd do those before you get the alignment and even if it doesn't fix it they should have been done anyways considering the car is 15 years old

How do you have a home depot intake?

[Bio248]

because he made it on his own with parts from home depot.

[1996pontiac]

Does anybody have a picture of the sway bar linkage? i cant find it on my car?

[postalc38]

Not from a GP, this pic is from my Aurora but it's all similar. You can see the endlink snapped at the top, and the bar is floating above the broken endlink, just next to the tie-rod.

[BillBoost37]

Reading the thread, I am wondering...what do you mean by swaying on the highway? You say that in your first post, and that's about all you say. From that we are assuming that something is going on with the car and that'll depend on our own personal interpretation.

My intrepretation includes you wildly yanking the wheel left to right and thinking the car sways more than it should at highway speeds. That's typically sway bar/end link related. Others are clearly thinking that the car is pulling or not steering straight. This would be alignment related.

After changing something like a tie rod that specifically changes the steering/alignment you should always get an alignment. You may only be a little off, but that can wear a tire over the next 20,000 miles etc. it would suck to kill a set of tires over an alignment.

Please elaborate as to what swaying at highway speeds means to you.

thanks