Intermittent heavy vibration

[ScubaDive]

Not all that happy.

Outline:
2008 Ranger Sport
auto
3.0L
V6
~120,000km
Had truck since new and dealer maintained.

Probelm:
Intermittent heavy vibration when driving, feel it in the steering wheel alot and in the driver / passengers seats. Vibreation seems to start at any time while driving and once I feel it start I’ll let my foot of the gas to slow down and it seems to get more perdominatate. After coming to a stop at a light or something and I start moving again there is no more vibration. I drive about 45km to work taking about 45 to 50min or longer if the weather is bad… for some reason the past two days there has been no problems going into work but driving home it may happen once or twice…. Had truck into dealer ship and they drove it around with no problems. (figures, that’s always the way)
- I notice no problems shifting
- Breaks seem fine
- No hp power loss
I need some ideas…. I place to start looking or something….

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Just guesses;
wheel bearings
u-joints if so equipped in front axle.
Good luck,

Richard

 

[Scrambler82]

Here's my guesses…

Brakes
Driveshaft front, check both end for excessive movement, maybe even the rear shaft.
Steering assembly, check end joints, any adjusting points may need to be tightened.

Check the rear too, vibrations can travel and it may have started in the rear.

I had a vibration that would come and go, turned into slowing the vehicle down and went away with stopping. I thought it was my front end going bad, ended up being the rear brake shoes fell apart, I have drum rear.

Luck

 

[RonD]

I had a rear strut on a car do that when it went bad, when a slight bump was hit at almost any speed the rear tire would start bouncing causing the vibration, strut/shock was not dampening the tire.
Shocks have 3 dampening valves, the one that went bad was the minimal travel one, so pushing up and down on the cars corners didn't show a problem.

Speed bumps or large bumps were not a problem struts worked fine, it was the small almost unnoticed bumps that set it off.
Had the tires balanced at two different places trying to track it down, lol.

 

[ScubaDive]

I had the truck bad to the ford dealership to check it out again and told them to service the breaks and have a look.....
Well they found nothing, but from the way I describe it to them, they seem to be thinking it may be a bad tire??? so they had the idea of rotating the tires and told me to keep any eye on it, if it was a tire the vibration should be more on the back end now....
does this seem reasonable??
I don't expect them to be able to fix what they can't find and I'm no mechanic but this vibration has me perplexed and concerned since I drive a good distance to work everyday........

 

[ScubaDive]

Well its been about 1 month and the problem has not come back since they rotated the tires.... Not sure what the problem was.

 

[RonD]

Glad it hasn't come back

My guess would be a slightly out of balance tire or worn/bad spot on tire and bad "fine dampener" on shock/strut.
With those two together you have the vibration, when they were separated by rotation you don't.