Recent horrible highway vibration.

[DucatiMike]

Well I hate being the new member that does a first post "please help" but that's my situation. I did a search of the forums on my problem and got some great advice, I also used the tech library, thought I found an answer spent some money and time...still have the problem. I want to say this is a great looking forum and I spent about 10 hours trolling the back posts and tech before registering.


Let me qualify this by saying it's our truck however it's my better half's transporter, she drives the truck and I ride the bikes. I tend to drive it about once every 3 weeks and always get a shock in regards to the latest issue. Not complaining about the truck, the Ranger has been great to us, just she will drive the brakes off the truck and not mention it until I roll through a stop sign, lol.

To the meat of it. 2003 Ranger V6 3.0 auto with 140,000 miles. Everything is stock and on it's second set of factory Wrangler tires. New rotors, pads, and wheel bearings at 100K. Couple of batteries, some oil changes, a coolant flush or two.

Last week the truck began to develop a shudder at 50mph that would go away quickly but return at 70 with a vengeance. If you power through to about 73 it seems to go away again. It seems to coincide with 3,000 rpm. Seemed like a misfire of some sort, read about the same issue in the tech library in regards to the cam synchronizer, all seemed to fail right at 130 to 140K. Sounded just right, replaced, no change. Seems you get to 50mph and 2,900rpm it shudders for a sec, up shifts and goes away until 70 and 3,000rpm. If you take your foot off the accelerator it goes away, replace it feel it again. Turn off OD, shifts down but still vibrates. Get over 3,200rpm and it seems to go away (thus my theory of a misfire at the time).

Replaced Cam synch, plugs, air filter, checked wires for rub, cleaned MAS with special cleaner, disconnected battery hoping to reset ECU, and ran a couple of bottles of injector cleaner through almost empty gas tank.

I need to change transmission filter and flush the fluid. Wondering if maybe a solenoid valve is shuddering instead of closing or whatever. Hoped a forced down shift via OD cancel would show the problem but wasn't satisfied anything changed.

Front tires do have some inside cupping from cornering and old front shocks. Rotated to rear to see if the harmonics or speeds would change proving the tires are bad. No change. Bearings felt tight with no slop while truck was on stands. Could not feel any play in the rods and ball joints. No real clunking when full lock turns, some creaking from the rear leafs. No missing wheel weights.

This weekend I plan to replace the U joints as they have plenty of miles on them and replace transmission filter and fluid since, well it needs to be done.

Should state that there is plenty of power and the truck accelerates hard through the gears up to 4,000rpm no problems felt, it's just at normal driving rates and speed that the shudder creeps up. No engine codes and has been scanned.

Visited a few shops I've dealt with to feel out ideas and 4 shops had about 30 opinions ranging from transmission filter, misfire at 3,000, bent drive shaft, bad tires, shocks, engine mounts, transmission mount, U joints, rear pinion and gears, and more ideas than that. I'm planning on getting new tires but don't want to experiment with $700 worth of tires to not fix it. Basically I have about $800 to spend right now so of course would like to find the right problem area.

I apologize for the long post but as always the more information, the better and faster the responses.

 

[Andy D]

my guess is u joints. Crwal underneath and see what happens when you the shaft . I did it to mine shortly after purchase. There is a 1/4" of play in the rear joint.

 

[adsm08]

U joints are worth checking since it's quick and easy, but seeing as how it seems to coincide more with engine speed than ground speed my first guess would be torque converter shudder.

Get it doing it and hit the overdrive cancel. See what happens.

 

[DucatiMike]

Thanks for the reply Ads.

I did mention in my post twice that I had turned off the OD hoping that the forced downshift would change something but it didn't seem to do anything different.

I've been keeping the torque converter in the back of my mind but just not that familiar with them as I've always made it a point to buy manuals. One thing is that it does not kick down and rev way up without making additional power. It kicks down, revs a little and appropriately as the speed increases.

 

[adsm08]

Yeah, I only skimmed the first post for the high lights. I'm putting a head in an Escape at work and so my head hurts.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I had a similar problem in my '86 extended cab ranger. I checked the u-joints and replaced two that were bad. That fixed part of the problem but didn't cure it. It finally got bad enough a few months later that I rechecked the u-joints again. It ends up that the third u-joint that I thought was still good was not, and when I replaced it, the vibration went away. I had the same symptoms as you at hi-way speeds and certain rpms.

Richard

 

[DucatiMike]

Well as stated I changed the U joints and did a transmission filter change. Wow that was so easy. I love having an Edge to work on. Never seem to need a jack. Took about an hour to knock it all out. Started to drain the transmission, moved to the driveshaft, knocked out the U joints, banged in the new ones, replaced driveshaft and finished the transmission. There was the tiniest amount of play in the rear U joint. I was expecting rusted bits since you couldn't feel any slop in the shaft while mounted.

Took a test drive and all was well.

Found a brand new set of Cooper Stampede 230/70x16 mounted on new black alloys over on Craigslist for much cheaper than new Wranglers so a great win win on that one. For all the maintenance things I did (that needed to be done), even swapping out the Cam synch, the total for everything came out to a few dollars less than just a set of new rubbers.

 

[Fordisthebest30]

typically, tires that need to be balance will shake after 50, leave then come back. But it all depends on the shake, if the shake is in really short and strong and pretty consistent at all speeds, it's typically the u joints, but it could be the throw out bearing or also called carrier berring, i don't remember tthe year of yours, but that's what it sounded like. My best guess is that your tires were unbalanced, and all they needed was to be balanced. also if there was cupping on the inside of your tires, chances are you need an alignment too. but good luck

 

[Fordisthebest30]

also could be a bent rim, it happens more often than you think. references: i work at les schwab