[Silencer23]

Hi there !
2L Duratec HE in a Focus 2009, I have 3 brand new engine mounts that I thought would solve the seat vibration issue (dash appears OK, just the seat/feet/outside of the car) but it didn't do anything to help it.

all 3 mounts are OEM Ford, paid good money for them, and zero contribution ! Not totally upset though, they needed replacing anyway - But I don't like to gamble so here I am asking you.....

The character of the vibration is like, quiet, quiet, quiet, mega vibe, quiet, quiet... mega vibe... about 3-4 second apart
Test so far:

-4 new spark plugs, cleaned throttle on both sides...
-Idle is steady, no corelation to vibration.
-Timing advance doesn't seem to produce negative values.
-Throttle Position nicely sweeps between 0.7v to 4.5V.
-Spark gap measured at 1.3mm
- MAP appears fine
-WOT on a hill shows no hesitation to speak of
- Removed Manifold butterfly runner vaccume, same.
- no EGR Faults on OBD.
- Ignition Voltage 12.3V
- Reset Keep alive Memory on ECU/TCM no use.
- Tried two different brand of lower torque mount, OEM and Febi Bilstein - Same
- New Air filter
- Fresh oil/Filter (castrol)
- Zero OBD Faults on all modules. ECU/TCM/HEC and the rest of the ford modules all clear of any codes.


Findings, not sure if it matters or not.
1. Opening the oil cap with car running, I can leave the cap on the hole when loose, and it will rattle in place. So there is some pressure going out but it won't knock the cap in the air. Normal ?
2. The tailpipe removes gasses in very similar manner to the "pumps" I feel in the seat. bababum, papapapabum, papabum, papapap pabum. Not a steady stream of air. Normal ?
3. I blocked the tailpipe to see if theres a gas leak, but all that happens when you block it is silence...
4. Possible relation - When I kick-down the 4 speed automatic and let go at 6k rpm, the car won't upshift and relax. It will often stay in that gear and slowly get down the revs until it shifts up/down. I know for a fact this isn't normal... Shifts are fine, proof is, manual mode is flawless. So must be non-tranny related.

Any ideas ?

 

[pbfoot]

Check your passenger side axle carrier bearing..

 

[amc49]

Yes, and wheel bearings too, sounds like you have an accumulative harmonic that slowly builds on thousands of shorter shake events. The only way you can space to 3-4 seconds between max amplitude. Has car ever been in an accident? The body being warped out of the factory shape can do that.

The rear tires can sometimes do it with the weird wear they do if they have not been rotated a lot. They then go way out of round, jack wheel up in air and spin it, it shows instantly if there.

Mounts pretty much only fix primary vibrations, not secondary or even more than that.

 

[Silencer23]

Thanks for the quick replies friends !
Master mechanic AMC it's an honor to have your reply here !
Re wheel bearings, would they vibrate in Park as well ? From what I remember, they go bad making a Jet takeoff sound, a sound which I do not feel when going down the road.
All tires are Pirelli P7's and brand new.

" side axle carrier bearing " - Is that an active ingredient in Park ?


No accidents in the service history that I have from new...

Definitely secondary vibrations. You turn the engine on, and it takes a few seconds for the first vibe to hit. Totally not primary.

Thanks ! Excited to be nailing this !
PS -AMC - Not to jump between unsolved issues, but as a guy who knows the 4F27E inside out, is it normal for units with a Manual Mode TCM/Shifter to prefer it greatly to the D mode ? The D mode is somewhat "surprised" of itself all the time, for example, after a speed bumper, when it can clearly stay at 2nd, it will downshift to first upon throttling after the bumper, only to switch to second a brief moment after. Stuff like that, why didn't it compute that it could stay in second ?
Shifting gears in Manual Mode (available in Mazdas, euro foci etc) is flawless up and down, and there is no slippage at max accelerations.

Funny because I have a regular 4F27E on an older focus, with no manual mode, just the shifter with the greed OD button, and it's much smoother on D.

Here's another related problem, maybe it's related to the Vibrations !
I kickdown, car goes from 4th to 3rd or 3rd to 2nd and 5k+ rpm. I quickly let go of all throttle and the revs stay up, with the engine not shifting to the next gear. It will slowly come to a stop while shifting eventually to 1st. But it won't "release" the kickdown and enter 4th.
Manual mode works fine again.
Is this a bug or a feature ?
My non manual mode 4F27E didn't do this... Perhaps the manual-mode 4F27E and the PRND2L have different TCM's ?

 

[amc49]

4F27Es are not sophisticated enough to even have a TCM, all control is inside the PCM.

ALL of them have a manual mode, you simply shift it yourself.

Wear in the valve body and at the end cover affects so many different things it's hard to say what is normal and what is not once they get a big chunk of miles on them. The hydro leaks tilt the trans operations all over the place and less than adequate software that does not make up for wear well adds to that. I have thought for a long time that the engine and trans both need a 'high mileage' software update just to affect the things that wear to tilt operation out of ideal. Say bumping up the hot idle speed to not vibrate with a/c on so much. Revised trans shifting points too, as well as pull away fuel mixture load settings in very hot conditions with a/c on that seem to about kill the engines until you go to about 3/4 throttle to then almost light the tires. You know, all the things Ford leaves in place to slowly annoy you into buying a new car when the one you have has years left on it.

If you have that extended vibration moment at IDLE in park and stopped....well, that would be a weird one. I would be checking the underside heat shields for that. Odd things like cracked unibody welds too. Bearings don't rattle when not turning. Looking for anything by design that can shake slower than the actual shake to build up sympathetically because of it by being flimsy enough or extended to be leveraged. I've seen a gathered pack of tubing going from back of car to front pop out of the plastic snap-in holder to make noise when they vibrated against the firewall. Look close at your belt tensioner pulley, if the center bolt of it disappears when the noise is active, the tensioner gets into a sympathetic lock in step with main engine vibes, but often does not vibrate 100% with it, only partly to make that type of noise. You'll swear the tensioner is hitting its' stop but it's not, rather the spring inside is banging against the outer case, there is a damper inside to stop that but they wear out in a couple months. So maybe that, you'd swear the engine itself is knocking though. That noise just like bad wheel bearing can exhibit in a hundred different ways and each is unlike the others.

You'll love this one. I live 7 miles from a railroad depot and track switching area, those trains provoke a sympathetic vibration in the house walls that actually vibrates things like pictures on the walls to vibrate even when the train noise itself is weak enough to not hear it. So you hear the pictures vibrate and nothing else, it freaks people out. At some point though the train noise will begin to show barely so you know what is doing it.

 

[Silencer23]

Lots to think about !
So accurate regarding these 4 speed transaxles. Funny to see it act up at 60k miles, fluid being serviced every 20k from new.
Currently it has Valvoline Maxlife ATF in it, I believe it's Mercon LV but says "Mercov V backwrads compatible"

So as long as I get no codes from it, I should just drive it as is with the flaws ? No use popping it open and poking around in the dark without fault codes huh ?

The pullies- here is my system from the books:

http://ci.catcar.info/ford_2017_01/euro/11104/g012647205.png

I replaced the top right tension pulley (with a used spare I had from a mazda) but it didn't alter the noise/vibration in anyway.

Is that the Crank pulley in the picture ? Says in the parts catalogue that it's a "pulley with vibration damper"


Things to rule out ...
Could a less than optimal MAP sensor do this ? I am about 800 meters above sea, and I get 3.5 PSI in Idle inside the manifold. Normal ?

Could less than optimal Coils do this ?

Weird indeed, as there are no fault codes the solution must be something extremely simple.
I am now in a "sell car" mode, that's how much it pisses me off. I would hate to waste so many days finding another used car and checking it out and then sorting it out after purchase for a couple weeks. It's too much for my brain at the moment ...

 

[homey55]

You could try and re-set the motor mounts. It's a long shot but sometimes they can be installed and tightened while the motor is in a bind.

Supposedly, you can loosen all of the mounts, start the car to "settle" the motor in the mounts, and then turn the motor off and tighten everything down.

 

[pbfoot]

You could try and re-set the motor mounts. It's a long shot but sometimes they can be installed and tightened while the motor is in a bind.

Supposedly, you can loosen all of the mounts, start the car to "settle" the motor in the mounts, and then turn the motor off and tighten everything down.

Good call.

 

[felixthecat]

You could try and re-set the motor mounts. It's a long shot but sometimes they can be installed and tightened while the motor is in a bind.

Supposedly, you can loosen all of the mounts, start the car to "settle" the motor in the mounts, and then turn the motor off and tighten everything down.

Specially for the psm......

 

[Silencer23]

Well - There isn't wiggle room in the top transmission mount, it's just a flat tray. but you can wiggle the hydraulic mount connection point with the frame. I could loosen the bolts to the frame (without jacking it) and starting the engine a few times, with a couple R to D shifts and then re-torquing the connection. Or do you prefer I jack the engine still ?

 

[homey55]

There is wiggle room in the top trans mount. There's not much, but again, just a tiny bind will resonate through the chassis. When you loosen the mounts make sure you support the motor with a jack.

 

[Silencer23]

Alright, tried it now with the simple Passenger mount, I let the running engine choose where it wants it and torqued it back up....
Didn't really do anything noticeable - I will check the tranny mount tomorrow although really I never had to mess with mount centering in any other car so even if it does work, I would hate that the engine is that sensitive hahah[poke]

 

[homey55]

You need to do all 3 at the same time, not one at a time. Also, starting the engine is not totally necessary (since the battery will be out of the car).

 

[amc49]

Making too much of nothing there, Focus mounts are engineered to work at almost every position they can be tightened up into. The rear trans mount actually performs better NOT aligning in any way, the tilt of the trans weight off of true vertical lines it up automatically. The pass side simply realigns to still be pretty much straight down loaded (it is omniversal in fit) as intended unless you have the bracket bolt holes off to one side a mile and the trans upper mount is easily viewed for fit as you tighten it up. Center any bracket holes with whatever you are bolting to and it should work, been there a hundred times.

 

[Silencer23]

Well it appears I can let it get worse so the problem reveals itself to me... Maybe it's one of the coil on plugs operating at 90% of its efficiency ? You can't test that though, or can you ?
Regardless, do you think small secondary vibrations are damaging to the engine and tramsmission or are they built to withstand long term minor harmonics ?

 

[pbfoot]

Well it appears I can let it get worse so the problem reveals itself to me... Maybe it's one of the coil on plugs operating at 90% of its efficiency ? You can't test that though, or can you ?
Regardless, do you think small secondary vibrations are damaging to the engine and tramsmission or are they built to withstand long term minor harmonics ?

Only with an oscilloscope or buy 1 new coil and keep substituting the new coil for an old one until you have tested all 4 cylinders.

 

[Silencer23]

What is a normal hot idle MAP reading, at 780m above sea ? I get 3.5PSI of pressure in the manifold.

 

[Fourspeed]

Just asking... You don't have the hvac selector on defrost, do you? That will cycle the a/c compressor every few seconds.

 

[03blksvt1]

According to master techs motor mount placement doesnt matter. Except of course when Ford directly addresses this issue in aTSB. Any ways to remove vibration (engine related) all mounts must be loose car unsupported and jack up the engine transmission assembly . rock the car forward and rear ward letting the car settle in position. tighten all mounts and lower the assembly. This is a Ford certified repair from a Ford ASSET "master tech". Personally I love it when people expect a focus to ride, drive, operate, shift and brake like a luxury car.

 

[amc49]

X2.

The Contour 'required' a 'powertrain alignment tool' that supposedly lined up the engine/trans in the frame, I never used one and simply centered up bolt holes in the bracket holes to never shake at all using the same zetec motor.