Quote:
Originally Posted by bdhurley
There is nothing worse than being stopped at a junction and seeing the bonnet shaking and steering wheel vibrating out of the dash... pulling out the choke to fast idle does hide it. Other than that, the car is mint.
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I think bonnet shake is a vintage 140 'thing'. On my 1971 142 the hood (bonnet) frame has a center section and at one time the hood skin was bonded to that center section with an adhesive of some sort. However, with age the adhesive let go and the whole hood skin was free to resonate resulting in different modes of drumming at different engine speeds. Quite interesting / annoying. I re attached the hood skin to the center frame with some seam sealer which eliminated the lower frequency large amplitude vibration modes. After that the sections on either side of the center frame would vibrate; but, with lower amplitude and at higher frequencies. I reduced those vibrations by applying a couple of viscoelastic pads on either side of the center frame. You can see them in the attached photo.
If you have steering wheel shake you likely have problems with the rubber bushes which hold the steering column in the column support brackets. It could be as simple as one or both of the brackets that hold the rubber bushes has come loose. The rubber bush may also deteriorate; but, when I did work on my car a couple of years ago the bushes looked to be in excellent shape. If the steering wheel is vibrating in and out on the column you have a problem with the steering column thrust bearing adjustment at the top and bottom of the steering column. Don't ignore that because the actual thrust bearing cages are out of production and if yours gets damaged you are going to be into looking for a new steering column from a salvage car.