Prius 3rd Gen (2014 JDM) Car feels wobbly

Car feels uneven/wobbly in flat surface. Did following things:

1) Tire pressure checked
2) All wheel balanced

Still having this wobbly feeling. I mostly feel it in lower speed. At high-speed I probably don't feel it much. Car has been fully serviced and passed NCT (Irish fitness testing for cars), no issues detected. The wobbly feeling is very subtle and not very strong but it's there. Before I thought it's the road that is making it wobbly but I realized it when driving in underground parking and the car was feeling up and down (on right and left) then I felt something is not right.

Any idea guys what might cause this issue?

 

While balancing tyres, i had all my tyres checked and they are all perfectly round. They aren't even a year old yet and less perhaps wasn't even driven 10k kms with them.

 

Not sure if i can take things apart myself. Gotta take it to workshop for further investigation. Let's see what they say. Some suggested testing the car in a garage with rolling road (where they can check whether the car drives steady or not).

Booked an appointment with workshop tomorrow. Will post update here. It's driving me crazy.

Not sure this will help as i don't have any lights on for warning or didn't have my tire aligned recently or i don't really have any alignment issue so far.

 

Alright will give it a try

 

Update: took my car today to the workshop and the replair guys couldn't find fault in their test drive. I insisted that there are wobbling but they think it's perfectly acceptable.

They checked shock absorbers and suspensions and no issues.

I tried to take explain that if they could take a few minutes test drive in a flat surface like underground parking they could perhaps find what I was talking about. The issue is, roads in Ireland pretty rough anyway so it's tricky to determine whether the car is wobbly because of road or car itself when the wobbly feeling is very subtle. It's subtle but it's there and I think my driving experience is not comfortable.

Now, I am thinking whether the tyre guys didn't check my tire properly or not. It is very much possible that one of tyre is not perfectly round and for some reason may be they didn't check my tyre properly (they are always in hurry and I feel they could take more time investigating).

Is there any way to check if my tyre is perfectly round at home or should I take my car to other tyre shop?

 

Yeah, I need to do something similar. My tyre is relatively new (changed in 2021). As my car is a Japanese import- usually they sit in ship container for at least 6 months they arrive in Ireland. So it could be case that because it was probably sitting too long (as a flat may be) caused some issue. Now visually conditions looks okay. No sign of wear or tear. But I guess I will jack it up and put a marker and rotate to see if it's perfectly round.

Another observation: when I have a passenger/passengers I don't feel the wobbly feeling as much as I feel when I m driving the car myself. So car weight could be a thing too? Does it indicate it's more of a tire issue than anything else?

 

Yeah, gonna try this soon

 

Basically, when i drive the car -

=> The ride is not comfortable when I am driving alone and car doesn't have any load
=> Car feels like boat (bending down right leaving the right up and then vice-versa)
=> It equalizes slightly when I have more passengers and/more load on the car

In sum, wobbly means car not staying steady in flat surface and the car behaves like riding in an uneven bumpy road. Again, this is very subtle. Mechanics took it for a test drive and could not detect anything. I believe he didn't test in proper testing condition to reproduce the issue.

 

It's not really a steering issue. My steering feels perfectly normal at any given speed. It's just the ride doesn't feel perfectly even when driving in a flat road.

 

Perhaps I am not used to Prius. In fact, this is my first car. Never had car before (I have been driving for quite long time but never owned one). Bought this 2014 Prius with (ODO 117k Kilometer) few months ago from an importer who imported this car from Japan.