Vibration!!!!!!!!!

I'm with Frank on this... I've never marked a drive shaft prior to removing it, and never had any vibration issues as a result of that. Ford most likely doesn't build their own drive shafts (if they do, it's an "internal" supplier), and I seriously doubt they do anything to them other then slapping them in the car after receiving them from a supplier. I work for an OEM auto supplier, and paint marks such as in that picture are generally applied as a visual check to assure that part has gone through some specific process or quality check or to identify it's for a specific application.

Driveline vibrations are going to be caused improper driveline angles, worn yoke or U joints, bent/out of balance drive shaft, or a loose pinion nut on the rearend. I would get those tires balanced, ensure all suspension components are tight, and go from there.

 

Thanks Jeff, but my Explorer is a (low mileage) 1998 .... solid rear axle. The later Exes got independent rears like that Cobra.

 

I reinstalled my driveshaft one (on my old 68 Mustang coupe) and didn't get the u-joint seated in the yoke correctly. It was shaking bad then bang...the joint broke. Lesson learned.

 

+3.

Additionally, bent rims will give you a similar symptom.

 

hey guys names todd, from hudson valley ny. im kind of having a similiar problem.
when im accelerating or cruising with the gas depressed at any time i have no vibration, but when i let off the gas pedal completely and coast it, it starts vibrating in the floor/seat area. i can let off the pedal under 35 mph and no vibration at all. its mostly noticiable from 35 mph to 50 mph sometimes pretty bad, but from around 60 + mph it tends to go away somewhat. also when i go to accelerate after the pedal has been up and im coasting (while vibrating) i can feel a small clunk just when it kicks back into gear from coasting, and if im only giving it just a little pressure on the gas to accelerate it vibrates harder, till i push down just a little more and it goes completely away. this only happens when i let off the gas completely while coasting at around 35 to 55ish mph.
also this may habe something to do with it. when i put it in reverse. i get a good clunk/clink metallic sound. sometimes when i go from Reverse to Drive it will also clink. but not often. almost everytime it will give a small jerk and clink sound going from any gear to reverse. thanks for any information you can give me to get me going on this because it does get quite annoying and i hate to hear any clunking noises. it didnt do this when i bought it a month ago but it seems to have gotten worse. i sprayed the u joints one night and let it sit till morning, drove it and the vibration was gone. parked it and half way through the ride home, after coming down a steep long road it started up again? so what could it be, the rear pumkin out of fluid? u joints? tranny bout to transform into a robotic semi truck? thanks guys!

a little background on the car. sat in a garage for a very long time. paint was rough so it was done up nicely and fully primed black. all original besides a new carb, fuel pump wires cap etc.... 48,000 miles. grandmas church car. it has staggered tires from the previous owner. both front and rear 15s but front has skinnys and rear has 8s, the car sits relatively flat besides the rear driver sag. underneath is aolid besides a few rusty spots, nothing bad though for a PA car. drives like a caddy, 250 inline six with a c4 automatic transmission, pretty basic, if you need me to send any pictures of something on the car let me know and ill try to get em asap.
and with this being my first posting i would just like to say whats up to my fellow maverick/ comet folk!

 

Todd,

The clunk you are hearing in most cases is going to be u-joints going bad. They are relatively cheap to do. Start there, and it is likely to fix it.

Drive it really easy until you get that correctly (like immediately ...). You don't want it to spit the driveshaft out. That would tear up a lot of stuff in the process.

 

I drove my 08 Ram with the Maverick in tow up to Oregon. I had a funny vibration which I thought was an out of balance tire/wheel and fought this for 670+ miles. It came in around 45mph, was gone around 50mph, came back in around 60mph and was gone around 65mph. When I got to Portland I had a tire shop rebalance the tires. The tires were right on although one had no weight on it, but the guy did say that one of my shocks was leaking.....................replaced both shocks and the vibration was gone. The leaking shock still felt good when you compressed it by hand..............................go figure.

 

...do you really think the "leaking shock" was your "vibration" ...

 

As an update the problem with my vibration was my left rear rim is warped....

 

that'll do it...

 

A bad shock can result in a vibration because of the lack of ability to control an imbalance that would normal be "in spec". You are never going to have a perfect balance on anything ... you can only get really close, and for the sake of getting the job done fast, most of the time it is just kinda' close.

When I worked for Goodyear, we were have a painfully slow day, and I decided to go through with an experiment I wanted to try. If you have a tire and wheel that really wants a lot of weight added to one spot, you can greatly change that by re-clocking the tire ... pop the tire loose on the rim and turn it 180 degrees, because needing a lot of weight can mean that you mounted the tire in a way that it's heavy point is close to the heaviest part of the wheel.

My goal was to get the minimum amount of weight added to each wheel on the car. I took re-clocking to a whole new level ... turning them in increments down to 45 degrees ... whatever that tire and wheel wanted. I got it down to where 3 tires only ran 1/8th of an oz (smallest weight we had). One tire fought me and I had to settle for running a 1/4 oz.

Prior to doing this the car was nice enough, but after, that car got amazingly smooth.... I could drive that car 100 mph and feel OK with hands off the steering wheel on a smooth road. Not bad for a 71 Torino that was 10 years old at the time. (note ... don't drive 100 mph on public streets ... )

Doing this whole drill took about 3 hours ... it wasn't easy. That is why you may see a tire shop hang 2 one oz weights next to each other and call it done ... lazy. Our shop wouldn't do that, but some will.

.... and why a bad shock can totally lose it, where a good shock might be able to mask a situation like this.

If you ever get wheels balanced and there is a bunch of weight on it, I would ask the shop to re-clock the tire.

 

that is kind of hard to do for someone like me that wants all his tires clocked the same way to the valve stem.
that same situation came up on one of my tires once, I just asked them to get me another tire...problem solved...

 

Yep..............replaced both shocks and vibration is gone...........up to 90mph anyway...............that's about as fast as I want to tow

 

vibration gone!! bad u joints on my 75 mav fixed!!

Hey guys. well i took all ur advice and decided to replace my u joints.
I went to auto zone and they gave me a 5900dl for the trans joint . This was done on
my 1975 4.1 250 i6 with a c4 transmission mostly stock. With a bad vibration around 35 to100 mph. started with. deceleration vibration then got much worse. they were sloppy and dry as a bone with no zerks.
It turns out and it was smaller than the one i took out. so i went to the parts house
here and i got a moog #369 greasable joint that was exact match. The biggest problem
was the tail end joint. two different sized caps. what i did was take another moog #369
u joint, and then got a precision brand #434 joint. removed the two caps that matched the larger ones and used those on the strap bolt ends.i know a lot of you have had trouble finding the right sized ones beaacause the parts stores list it is a 369# on both
ends when it isn't. i did the job in about 2 hours with no major problems. only used a hammer and socket... cleaned the shaft holes. reinstalled the driveshaft the same way it came out, relatively easy for my first time changing them. and man what a difference . she rides like a dream with no vibrations at all. lovin it. hopefully this helps someone save some time finding the right parts. good luck and thanks again!