vibration problem solved

[ernie1]

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.

[j-d]

Never said you should not have. My points were

problem isn't always the joints

even the balance

or even the center bearing

could have left factory that way

there are some honest shops after all

who figure out what's actually wrong

I don't know what it's called, I'll say "face angle" meaning that the flange on the front of the differential should not be vertical to the road surface. Rather angled to reduce the amount the UJoint has to flex.

The older I get the more likely I am, to change out every part I touch on a repair, hoping I won't have to go back into at least that area, again...

[ernie1]

I want to clarify that I would not have considered not changing the u joints after all the work I went through to remove the drive shaft because the rear was attached to the pinion gear with red Loctite. Took a lot of pounding to get the bolts loose. After the shaft was removed from the vehicle I rotated the joints by hand to try to detect any roughness or looseness and found that they rotated smoothly and I didn't detect any rusty looking metallic particles on the exterior of the cups. I only mentioned that the u joints did not seem to be worn and causing the vibration out of concern for locating the source of the problem. Heck the cost of two new u joints is nothing compared to the cost of repairing the drive shaft and the couple hours to remove and install the shaft. I don't believe in being cheap when it comes to vehicle repair because I really value my time.

[j-d]

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.

[Matt_Colie]

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.

[mkirsch]

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

[darsben1]

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

[Jframpey]

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!