Thread: Drive vibration

I had a driveline vibration in my D3 early last year, only really showed up under deceleration. I thought it was the rear propshaft due to the condition of the centre bearing, but turned out to be the front propshaft was worn and was the cause

I had to replace my rear prop shaft earlier this year but I wasn't getting any vibration from it only a noise under light acceleration on a slight incline. I uploaded a video of the noise to my thread What is this sound! (aulro.com)

When I picked up a spike through the sidewall of a near new tyre I did ask that question of the tyre shop and was assured that as long as I had 2 tyres of similar wear on the rear I would be ok
I was not aware that all 4 needed to be similar.
Will replace the 2 warn tyres while I am sorting this vibration
I have rotated the wheels but made no difference

Originally Posted by Journeytower

Full time four wheel drive should have equal size and wear tyres all around. The transfer case has to work much harder with unequal sizes creating much more heat and breaking down the lubricant quicker which can lead to premature wear.

As previously stated, start with the simple stuff first. Also get all your uneven wheels balanced and rotated before you replace them with equal size tyres. Anytime I see one of these vehicles with uneven tyres I wonder about it's service commitment.

Thanks for the heads up on the vibration diagnosis app
First I have heard of one.
There is a Apple and a Android.
Will install that and see what happens

All the input gives so much help when there are so many components involved.
I am sure others will also benefit from this collection

Cheers Devo

Originally Posted by FisherX

There is an app you can get for your phone that can pinpoint vibration issues in your car. Might be worth the $99. Might save you replacing parts due to guess work.

NVH on the App Store

Your cv probly needs replacing anyway but it you jack up your car put it on stands and rotate your tyres one by one

If you get a clunking feeling when you rotate the tyre it will end up being a cv
With the front also turn the tyre full lock both ways and rotate the tyre at the same time most cvs start to show signs of failure when turning to begin with

Are you running standard height when driving or have you got Johnson rods in

Originally Posted by devo

Thanks for the heads up on the vibration diagnosis app
First I have heard of one.
There is a Apple and a Android.
Will install that and see what happens

All the input gives so much help when there are so many components involved.
I am sure others will also benefit from this collection

Cheers Devo

I'd be interested to see what sort of info that app hands out (machine vibration analysis is my day job...)

Originally Posted by shanegtr

I'd be interested to see what sort of info that app hands out (machine vibration analysis is my day job...)

Reminds me of a Vibration issue I had with some MTU diesels. My company had 4 MTU 2000 series V16 engines rebuilt by the local MTU outlet for some Patrol Boats. We fitted the engines and all was good.

The crew started to complain about the doors on their cabins where rattling while underway. We carried vibration analysis of the engines and it came in within spec. We didn't have a baseline of a normal engines so VA readings was just a guess.

It wasn't till the second boat had the same issues that we looked into further.

Turns out when MTU outsourced the Crankshaft balancing they neglected to tell the balancing company that each big end should have 10kg counterweight on each of the big ends. They removed like half a kilo of weight from each of the crank counterweights but said nothing like this was not normal.

Anyway 4 engine removals, rebuilds and refitting were near a million bucks.