I drove up to my girlfriend's parent's place for Christmas. Last Friday I took my truck in for an alignment before this trip. I was called and told my driver's side hub asembly as shot and that was my droning noise heard while making right turns, but not lefts. Before this I had also replaced my u-joints, both on my rear shaft and the front joint on the superlift front shaft. I had the asembly replaced and thought all was fine. However, on my drive up to girlfriend's parents' place I had a strong, oscillating vibration from 78mph and above, slight around 76-77, and smooth drive at 75. The vibration would last for about 5-6 seconds, stop for 1-2 seconds, and then repeat 5-6 seconds. I'm completely at a loss of what this could be. I also still have a clunk, though intermittent (sometimes I get it and sometimes I don't), when coming to stops. I'm thinking this is possibly the rear pinion bearing and I'm wondering if this would cause an strong oscillating vibration? Other option is maybe an unbalanced tire? I unfortunately can't check at this moment, but I'm curious on opinions of what could be going on. What's really frustatring is it never fails, everytime I go to my girlfriend's parents' I've got some sort of semi-major repair to do. The truck is honestly pissing me off.

 

Does the clunk happen when you roll back at a stop?

 

no...only going forward

 

bump...........come on guys, any help?

 

Sounds driveshaft related to me. Tires out of balance don't normally do that. And even tires that are out of align don't either.

One other possibility is that the tires had gotten feathered and now that it's aligned it's causing this? I don't know.. you might try swaping the tires front to rear and see if it changes.

Rich

 

why do you think pinion bearing?

 

the clunk I still have after replacing the u-joints.

wydopnthrtl...

It could very well be feathered tires. I didn't think my hub assembly was going, figured my droning noise was just the tires, but going on 2 weeks ago I noticed that my camber was off from a distance. Figured I'd take her in before driving 300+ miles to Los Alamos. I can't figure this clunk out and given my rear pinion seal going 3 times I'm leaning towards the pinion bearing. It's a hard clunk at times and sounds as if from the front end however. Could be my brake pards or a loose caliper. It's driving me nuts and now this weird vibration. When I'm back in town I'll stop for a balancing to see if that helps on the drive home.

 

do you have the aluminum driveshaft or steel?

 

I'm assuming steel, it's a nice rust color. Could be slip yolk bump I suppose.

 

yeah that is what i was implying. a simple grease could solve this issue.

 

silly question I suppose, but how would one grease it? Pop off the rear DS cv boot and go nuts?

 

its got a goofy clamp on it, cut that clamp then the driveshaft should slide apart. grease it and assemble it back together. some people have used zip ties or other types of clamps to put it back on. I wouldnt think it would cost much for the ford dealer to do it.