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Bad Vibration

UPDATE:

Well, I am back from my 18 hour road trip to Georgia(hiking 40 miles of the AT) in my X and have some ideas. i noticed all the little things I have done have indead made some diference, but not enough.

I still get a full body massage on the highway at speed. The faster the worse... But this trip I noticed some different things that I was ignoring before. I had noticed before that my shackles had spaces between the leafs and the frame at the bolts. Could cause play side to side. I also noticed my bushings for the springs are old and worn. When hitting a bump on a turn or at speed I notice a good deal of wobble in the rear. With that in mind I started to thing maybe there is just too much play and it is causing the vibes. I also notice that the whole truck wobbles on the highway and that cannot be normal. Here are my ideas:

1) Is it possible to have a bad set of leaf springs that can vibrate?

2) I am going to replace the leaf bushings

3) I am going to take the torch to the shackles and remove the center crossmember so it mounts flush and tight then I will weld a new crossmember on.

After this everything should be tight! Unless, the spring set is currupt for some reason???? Maybe I should buy the old man emu leafs, but I will try this first I guess.

What are everyones oppinions/ideas?
 



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Now that you mention it, I thought the exact same thing when I put those shackles on... that the gap between the shackle and frame was too large... you may be onto something with that. I dont think it is my springs unless the shackles somehow effect them. I didn't notice the shake before the lift.

-Kevin
 






I may be experimenting with that as early as tomorrow night. I am going to start by cuting that cross member out and see what happens. I will let you know what I come up with. Let's all cross our fingers.
 






Well, I went to a couple local shops today at lunch and the guy at the spring shop told me I should turn my shims around facing the other way. I don't get it!!! I thought that the angles measured at the flange ot the Diff housing and at the Transfer case needed to be the same. These guys tell me other wise. He is telling me that I need to bring the front of my diff housing higher... that is what he gets paid to do so I will be trying that and I will let you know. If anyone has any ideas please chime in!
 






taxxman wheres the results, im very interested in finding out if it fixed the shake
 






Sorry. I got so frustrated with this problem that I am pulling my hair out. That didn't work. I replaced the drive shaft with one from South Bay Driveline and that got rid of my u-joint binding problem, but the vibration is still there. Tonight it goes to a 4x4 shop to see if they can figure it out. I was also suggested that it could be a bent axel. But I have no runoff gauge to check it with. I should know something in a day or two.
 






Check this link, especially #'s 222, 255, & 278 then go to nhtsa site and check out all the explorer complaints about shaking, seems to be a caster camber kit fixed some???



Dead Link Removed
 






Alright I am back. After the truck spent 3 weeks at a local 4x4 shop, nothing has changed. With my interest and theirs in mind they ddn't want to start replaceing stuff that they where not sure was ok or not. Even with their fancy equipment, we cannot figure out where is. Here is a reply I got from Explorer Express:

"Thanks for your e-mail. We have run into this problem before. There are a
couple of possibilities. We have cured a few of them by replacing the tires.
Even though the tires may be perfectly balanced, we've found that they're not
always perfectly round. A perfectly balanced, out-of-round tire will vibrate
like crazy, usually worse at certain speeds. The other possibilities are
motor mounts or shocks, or a combination of both. Ford actually has a
technical service bulletin out for what they call "aftershake".
It doesn't apply to all years but we've found the problem in vehicles that
the bulletin doesn't cover. The bulletin says to check or replace all of the
the things you've already covered. If the problem still exists it says to
replace the shocks, including the 5th shock mounted laterally on the
differential, and the motor and transmission mounts. Hope this has helped."

I haven't had a chance to reply to this with any more questions but I will update as soon as I can.
 






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