Long story short, The minty 996tt that I was supposed to pick up tonight has a pretty bad steering wheel vibration at 60mph and up.

The owner swears that this is due to the rear tires being worn so badly on the insides that they are showing the cords of the tires.

Anyways, he has agreed to purchase new rear tires and get an alignment before I take the car.

My question is.... Does it make sense for the highway speed steering wheel vibration because we badly worn inside tread on the REAR tires?

 

No.

Have the tire shop check the front tires- take them off the car, balance them, do a roadforce balance- see how the tires are.

On the alignment make sure they don't just say "It meets spec"... you want it optimized. Furthermore you want to see how bad it was before they made changes.

(FYI- I recommend almost zero toe- have them set it at the minimum of the allowable Porsche toe settings, that will fix the cording issue he had on the rears)

Ideally you would talk to the shop, so they can disclose anything they see or find, maybe evidence of something or difficulty in hitting the numbers.

Any other issue from the PPI you are having done?

A

 

Yea. I thought that steering wheel vibration is more from wheel balance in the front wheels/tires.

 

Wait, I am NOT saying that it the issue. I'm saying that you need to do those things FIRST before we get into what else it may be. Might fix it, might not.

It is one thing to take guesses with repairs for a car you own, but too many buyers rely on an estimate to address issues and get screwed when it turns out to be inaccurate or optimistic....

 

the front wheels and suspension should be checked.

link to the fs ad?

 

Could be something as simple as it threw some front wheel weights, but I'd be reluctant to buy the car until the owner sorts it out.

 

Ya. I won't pick it up until it is solved. Just in case it is something else

 

Steering vibration is usually from the front tires/suspension not the back. I had the same problem. In my case it was from a combination of wheel balancing AND alignment which helped a lot, but ALSO needed to replace worn shock absorber mounts and bushings (both fronts). The entire job cost me around $1400.