No Toe? Options

[MikeM]

Hi all...many of you have helped me try to find a vibration/shimmy in my car in past posts. Today as I was studying my records for this car, I looked at the last alignment printout. It shows NO front toe. As in - 0.12 degrees. Both sides. I think spec is like 20 minutes, or about 0.33 degrees.
Could this be the cause of my shimmy? What does NO TOE feel like?
Thanks,
Mike

[DBCooper]

I worked in an alignment shop when I was young. No, toe by itself won't cause shimmy, that's true, but it will exacerbate anything loose in the front end and let it vibrate in a harmonic, or shimmy. For example with wheel bearings a little loose the zero toe will let the tires track freely, so any bearing movement will let the tires hunt just a bit from side to side as the slack in the bearings allows, and at certain speeds you'll get a shimmy. In that same car with all else equal and a good bit of toe added the bearings will be slightly stressed from the bit of tire scrub that was added, which will put pressure on the bearings and you won't get the shimmy. It'll still happen occasionally when you hit a ripple in the pavement or whatever, but it'll be occasional.

Look, the only reasons for shimmy are something being loose, out of balance or not rolling true. You can guess and replace parts, and invite other people to guess all day long, but until you get someone involved with the car who understands alignment everything you do will still just be guesses. Go to a GOOD alignment shop, they're the people who deal with everyone's "shimmy" problems, and have them diagnose it for you. No guessing.