Bad News for Me...

[traben27]

Well, I've been having a weird vibration that comes through the entire truck and a lot through the t-case shifter. I thought it might have been the u-joints but those checked out fine. I ended up taking it into the shop today and the mechanic just got back to me and it sounds like this could end up being pretty costly. He said something is definitely broken, and it might even be a tooth from a transfer case gear broke...baaad news for me with my trip to moab being next thursday...I hope he's wrong.. :( :chair:

[04 Rocko Taco]

does it vibrate in 2WD and 4WD? or just one or the other?

[traben27]

um, i'm not sure about 4wd, but it definitely happens in 2WD. As soon as I hit 25 I get a slight vibration, then 30ish the t-case shifter gets a loud rotating noise in it and vibrates.I used to be able to push on it to stop the noise but now its gotten so loud that it does nothing. Once I hit 40+, if I let off the gas and then just barely push on it I get a loud and deep vibration through the whole truck. I'm really hoping its not the gears, although it is somewhat of an excuse to go lower in the transfer case, but still thats money

[Good Times]

sounds to me that your rear driveshaft might be all dinged up that it's not balanced anymore. since it only appears at a certain mph that's the first thing I'd check. Easy to check too.. just go under and see if it looks all jacked up! :)

other than that I'm clueless.

keep us posted.

[traben27]

Yep, I'm just as clueless as you are. But I'll have the shop its STILL at (ah I hate not having the truck overnight) check it in the morning. The mechanic was like "this is the weirdest thing I've seen in awhile." But I know it's not the u-joints, I checked those and then he double checked them.

I'll keep you posted on what happens.

[4runnerchevy]

Remove the drivelines, go up to 25 and see if you have the noise. This will eliminate drivelines and axles. This will also narrow it to the tranny and t-case. From what your saying, I doubt it was a tooth, more like a input shaft bearing or countershaft bearing. If it is one of these, you can put new ones in without tearing the t-case apart, but you do have to get the t-case off the tranny.

Just a thought !

[traben27]

Called the shop this morning and here's the diagnosis:

He can't figure out whats going on haha. He did remove the driveshaft and everything and says its definitely not coming from there or the rear axle and he's almost positive its not coming from the transmission/transfer case. What he (and the other two techs he had drive it) noticed: It seems to be a vibration that starts up front and as the speed increases it moves throughout the back of the truck until it centers itself in the middle of the truck. He said to him, it could even be just a bad tire. Lucky for me, I work at discount tire. So I'm going to pick it up later and take it down to work and put it on the road force machine and see what's going on exactly...I'll keep you posted.

[oly884]

Best of luck with that man. It would sure be a blessing if it was just a tire out of balance.

[traben27]

Best of luck with that man. It would sure be a blessing if it was just a tire out of balance.


I don't think its out of balance, I just balanced them myself less than 1,000 miles ago. What I'm hoping for is the tires separated or has a flat spot. Then I can just adjust it out and end up with a new tire from BFG. I also realized that one of my wheels is slightly bent (totally slipped my mind), so it may be up front now and combined with tire can be causing my problems. I'm hoping for the best, although I would've liked to get some crawler gears from marlin :D

[Cheese]

With troubleshooting, when things happen all of the sudden, bear in mind what or if you changed anything.

A vibration that worsens with speed is probably something rotational, not surprisingly.

I would be really impressed if you quietly took a tooth of the gears in your t-case and suddenly the vibrations happen.

A tire or driveshaft vibe will do what you describe, starting at one end and feeling like it takes over the whole truck. It will also send the vibe more directly up to the tranny/t-case.

Good luck.

[traben27]

I have the whole staff helping me haha.

Well I got it back and I talked to the mechanic for about 15 minutes about it all. He couldn't figure out exactly what it was, but his idea is that as the truck gears up to get going, the driveshaft angle is thrown out of whack. I don't think this idea is what's going on in my case, but I know for sure its not the tires. I took it up to work and checked the balance and road-forced them to see exactly what was going on with the tires and wheels. They all checked out.

Does anyone happen to know if there's some kind of rebuild kit for all of the components of the shifters (for an auto) that are on the inside of the truck? I have some play and I think that if I can just get that shifter noise to quiet down the vibration will be less noticeable.

[YotaFun]

My friend is having the same problem as you.
He has ediagnosed it as a bad tranny mount.

You sure its not a bad mount?

[Good Times]

Good idea Avy.. a bad mount can do wonders too. though I'm not sure if it'd be a harmonic issue but you never know. Check that first and then if that's not the case try this.

got stock tires? try driving on those and see if the problem persists? if it does then you know it's not the tires cuz you're using a whole different set (unless you got jinxed and happen to get a set of unbalanced tires)
if problem persists move on else you know it's your tires:
remove front driveshaft only and drive around. results?
remove rear driveshaft only and drive around. results?
remove both driveshafts and accelerate. results?

The last 3 will help to determine if it's the driveshaft(s) or the tranny/tc whatever else.

I'm with Cheese in that it could very well be the tires or driveshafts. Can't think of anything else at this point.

[corax]

when did the bad vibrations start? was it after you changed something maybe?

are the u-joint angles the same? the angles need to match to cancel each other out.

[traben27]

Thanks for all the responses first of all. I've got a lot of ideas now, I just need to test them out, but it started snowing randomly (??!) it was in the 70s yesterday!

I've been trying to figure out what I may have changed before this started happening. All I can think of is that I rotated/balanced my tires (did this myself at work) and had it aligned (hopefully for the last time). I was driving from Provo, UT to Rexburg, ID, it's about a 4 hour drive. The noise/vibration started to become most noticeable after about 3 1/2 hours of driving. This might just be because this is the first time I dropped below 70 mph though. Then driving around town up there is when I noticed it was substantially worse than before.

I'm beginning to wonder if I should just give up on this and deal with it for this summer until I sell it. The only reason I wanted to fix it was incase it was something like u-joints that could possibly break and leave me stranded on my 1200 mile trip home at the end of next week. I don't want to dump anymore money into this unless it's absolutely necessary. I think I'm just going to take the cover off the bottom of the shifters and maybe see if there's anything in there that is loose to keep the shifter from vibrating so loudly, and then I'll just deal with the truck's vibration until it's sold.

[corax]

one other thing you could do to see it something went south internally. Go to Home Depot or Sears or your local hardware store & buy a pair of "paint filters" - they look like a paper funnel with some fine mesh screen at the bottom. Drain the fluid from your trans & transfer through this and see if anything comes out. If it was already drained & refilled recently, you might not find anything anyway

[YotaFun]

Well your shifter vibrating so much has to be some kind of clue to maybe a tranny mount.
I think if it was an engine mount going you would only feel vibes in extreme instances of torque (if the 3.0 actually has any)

Just a thought.

[traben27]

Update: one new thing i've noticed, the vibration ONLY occurs when i am pushing on the gas, as soon as I let off it stops.

I talked to a few more mechanics and what i've noticed is they all go to the u-joints first and everything about the driveshaft. The rear is still leaking fluid right at the back of the transmission, and this seems to have started probably about the same time as the vibration occurred.

Today I blocked the truck, put the parking brake on, and put it in neutral, got under the truck and I can move the driveshaft up and down at the transmission end slightly. It doesn't seem to be moving at the joint, but the entire flange coming out of the transmission moves as well. Is there some sort of bearing in there that could have gone bad? Maybe the seal in the rear leaking caused the bearing to go bad as well (oil taking out all of the grease)?

I'm really hoping to get this fixed before next thursday...hopefully I'm coming closer to the solution.

[traben27]

It's Fixed!

I decided to just deal with the problem, but I wanted to fix the leak at the back of the transmission. I can't do the work myself because I'm in campus dorms and they got mad at me last time for working on my truck in the parking lot, but I took it in and they replaced the rear output shaft seal. The seals really weird because I guess it's made up of 3 separate pieces essentially, one of them being a big felt ring. Apparently the old seal was worn out enough that the felt wasn't doing its dampening job.

Long story short, no vibrations just in time for Moab tomorrow :)

[Good Times]

awesome! have fun :)