Is this vibration normal?

[Viper Driver]

You most likely got a lemon or a bad apple, and it does happen once in every blue moon. Ford sold thousands of Explorer's and I see them every day on the road. I open up my back windows to half... lots of wind noise but the seats are not shaking like you describe.

The only problem I have is with dealerships. I tried 3 different dealerships for regular oil change. Last one at 8K miles, fuel filter, oil and they said cabin filter needed to be changed, I payed $180 or so bucks, at 14K, they say that 10K maintenance is due and some kind of fluids needed to be flushed, payed $270 which was about 200 bucks in labor and 70 bucks in oil fluids.
Sad part for me was that I wanted to disable double honk sound in my car when I open the door and leave the car, but no dealership has a clue.I payed $270 and after a few hours of labor just for oil change, fluid change they did not care about my concern.

Forddealz - I would have to respectfully disagree that my vehicle is significantly different than others and/or a bad apple. Your window experiment may have produced different results based on wind velocity which most don't think about when dealing with an issue like this. If you happened to try the windows at 55pmh while driving with a 15 mph tailwind, you would probably be out of the envelope of where most experience this issue. Same goes with driving in to a stiff headwind and the top end of the flutter envelope. Who knows how a stiff crosswind effects this issue, but I'm pretty sure Ford doesn't know.

Your statement about Ford selling thousands of Explorer's makes it sound like by virtue of selling big quantities of a machine, it has been designed and manufactured properly. If that were the case, there would be no TSB's, recalls, etc. Unfortunately, I choose to take the low road on this as I eluded to in my first post; the vast majority of people don't care or notice and for those that do, the fix/return procedures are so painful, they don't say or do anything. The quote "If it's bad and everybody's doing it, it's still bad" comes to mind as well as an issue/mindset we still deal with in the aviation community - just because we don't frequently crash airplanes does not mean the machines or procedures are necessarily safe. That can be a hard one to get your arms around..

Dealerships typically don't have very good reputations for a plethora of reasons and I feel your pain. For one thing, there are too many people involved. With a recent issue I had where I was at the dealership, I was told I'd need to contact Ford about the problem at which point, I explained that the person I was talking with at that moment WAS both the face and voice of Ford Motor Company. That holds true all the way from the CEO down to the admin assistant who greets you at the door, but that's mostly off topic of the vibration/flutter issue. I'm still hoping somebody can find the smoking gun for the problem that it seems many are having if you read through all 14 pages of this thread and various other online forums.

Thanks for the reply and best of luck getting that annoying double beep shut off