Now that I have been driving the car again for the last 2 months, I can report that although the original "shudder" is no more, something else is going on. Occasionally during acceleration, ANY acceleration (not just hard), I can feel a "roughness" through the steering wheel. It isn't what I would call a shudder, but more like some kind of added friction. I can't predict when it will happen, but it seems to be about half of the time. Not nearly as annoying as the original shudder, but still annoying. Oh well... I sure as heck am not sending it back to Oahu again, so I'm just going to live with it - at least for now.