Hey folks,
I have learned quite a bit from this site, so I thought I would write a quick post about a problem I finally got to fixing on my 2013 SE 5-DR, 5 SPD MAN. Hopefully, this will help someone else.
My car has 98,000 miles and was purchased with 93,000. I had always had a vibration at highway speeds under load, such as when pulling a hill. Down-shifting made it worse, but the frequency of the vibration did not change with engine speed. It was not in the steering wheel, like a tire or front-end problem, but could be felt through the seat and the gas pedal.
The final solution primarily ended up being to replace a bad passenger-side axle. I had suspected axle problems at first, due to experience with other cars, but I could detect no free play and none of the popping or clicking a bad CV joint often causes. The CV boots were also in great shape.
So, I moved on to motor/trans mounts. I replaced a badly dry-rotted upper mount and the lower trans torque strut which looked fine, but did not solve the problem.
I ended up using the Motorcraft parts, since the Raxles brand axles were not available. I have had bad experiences on some cars with the cheap new axles from the local parts houses, but Raxles has a stellar reputation. We'll see how long these last. The right axle eliminated 95% or so of the problem, so I changed the left as well, which got the rest of the vibration. It drives very smooth now.
I opened up the inner and outer joints and could see no unusual wear or other problems. The intermediate support bearing seemed fine as well, so I'll just put this one down to details unknown.
Again, hopefully this will help save someone some cash or headaches.
I have learned quite a bit from this site, so I thought I would write a quick post about a problem I finally got to fixing on my 2013 SE 5-DR, 5 SPD MAN. Hopefully, this will help someone else.
My car has 98,000 miles and was purchased with 93,000. I had always had a vibration at highway speeds under load, such as when pulling a hill. Down-shifting made it worse, but the frequency of the vibration did not change with engine speed. It was not in the steering wheel, like a tire or front-end problem, but could be felt through the seat and the gas pedal.
The final solution primarily ended up being to replace a bad passenger-side axle. I had suspected axle problems at first, due to experience with other cars, but I could detect no free play and none of the popping or clicking a bad CV joint often causes. The CV boots were also in great shape.
So, I moved on to motor/trans mounts. I replaced a badly dry-rotted upper mount and the lower trans torque strut which looked fine, but did not solve the problem.
I ended up using the Motorcraft parts, since the Raxles brand axles were not available. I have had bad experiences on some cars with the cheap new axles from the local parts houses, but Raxles has a stellar reputation. We'll see how long these last. The right axle eliminated 95% or so of the problem, so I changed the left as well, which got the rest of the vibration. It drives very smooth now.
I opened up the inner and outer joints and could see no unusual wear or other problems. The intermediate support bearing seemed fine as well, so I'll just put this one down to details unknown.
Again, hopefully this will help save someone some cash or headaches.
