vibration problem solved

Question

I've been chasing a vibration in my class b rv for a couple of years now and finally fixed it. It was coming from the drive shaft that ,according to the shop that does driveline repairs, was not straight and needed new u joints and balancing. i don't think the u joints were bad but I had to accept the word of the shop. Over the last two years I've lost hubcaps from the right rear wheel numerous times and once on the left rear. To try to correct this problem I've had the tires balanced and rebalanced and finally had it road force balanced. None of the balances seemed to do any good and I had just installed the second set of tires during this period of time. It was determined that the tires were not defective and causing the vibration. I also purchased a new set of wheel spacers thinking the old set was the source of my problem. No such luck. Finally the only thing left to do was to check the drive shaft for issues. Now that the problem is corrected the rv drives smoothly with no vibration what so ever. I have a 2005 PleasureWay Excel on a Ford E350 chassis.

jframpey · Answer

I drove,threw a water puddle,after,sitting in traffic on a hot day - suddenly felt a vibration. The hot muffler/catalytic converter heated the driveshaft. The quench from the water caused a spot welded weight to pop Off!

darsben1 · Answer

ernie1 wrote:I've been chasing a vibration in my class b rv for a couple of years now and finally fixed it. It was coming from the drive shaft that ,according to the shop that does driveline repairs, was not straight and needed new u joints and balancing. i don't think the u joints were bad but I had to accept the word of the shop. Over the last two years I've lost hubcaps from the right rear wheel numerous times and once on the left rear. To try to correct this problem I've had the tires balanced and rebalanced and finally had it road force balanced. None of the balances seemed to do any good and I had just installed the second set of tires during this period of time. It was determined that the tires were not defective and causing the vibration. I also purchased a new set of wheel spacers thinking the old set was the source of my problem. No such luck. Finally the only thing left to do was to check the drive shaft for issues. Now that the problem is corrected the rv drives smoothly with no vibration what so ever. I have a 2005 PleasureWay Excel on a Ford E350 chassis.You were wise to accept the word of the driveline shop about the U-Joints. Imagine if they had left the old ones on. You may have never found the problem

mkirsch · Answer

U-joints are relatively cheap, and they'd need to be replaced sooner or later anyway.

matt_colie · Answer

Trust me on this one.... If you were running long at all with the prop shaft out of balance, the U-joints needed to be replaced.  Matt - Auto test lad rat for decades.

j-d · Answer

I brought the driveshaft from our old '83 E350 DRW (RV chassis) in for inspection/tuneup. They called and said one of the yokes (ends) wasn't welded straight. They would weld that, inspect the UJoints, balance and (I think) paint the driveshaft. I said OK, they called again. Said the UJoints checked OK, did I want new ones anyway. I said no, picked the driveshaft up, installed and ran smoothly for the several years more that we owned that coach. Cost was a little less than $100 and they did replace the center bearing.

Pretty stand-up shop. Told me they stopped selling CV half-axles to "rebuilders." First, they grind the case hardening off the surfaces to install larger bearing balls to get slop out of the worn-out cores. But then when they found the "rebuilders" were building under-capacity rebuilts by welding commonly available small CV joints into larger, less-available cores, that was enough. No more core sales for them.

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vibration problem solved

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