So i recently bought a 1996 4.9 4wd truck with only about 88,000 miles. When first driving it i didnt really notice a thing. A few days later i started to feel a "kick" and some vibrating noise when accelerating from first to second. The truck has the e40D transmission. I decided to do a transmission oil change and to my luck i the oil pan and magnet were pretty much free of any metal shavings. The magnet did have a good amount of sludge but i know thats normal. The transfer case barely had a quart of oil and was extremely burnt. I also drained out the torque converter. So after doing the maintenance, the vibrating noise is still there. I went through all the sensors and found many of them pretty dirty so i cleaned them (just for now) and the kicking seem to stop. The noise though is still there, any suggestions of what it could be?

 

I suspect it's a bad u-joint. I don't see how it could be the torque converter unless it does it in all gears, not just first and second.

 

No sadly it isn't a simple thing, I've checked cause that's what I suspected but the shaft is on there pretty good and joints look really good as well

 

In my experience, you cannot tell a bad u-joint for sure without removing the driveshaft.

 

Thank you both for your response by the way! And I will check it out right now but also yesterday I stepped on it pretty hard going about 20 and it reved up and the vibrating intensified all the way to 35

 

Another thing I see is when I put the truck in reverse or drive it has a little delay, just a few seconds to it goes into gear. When I put it on 1st it like does a little jump

 

Absolutely true!
That's another reason to suspect a bad u-joint.

 

I'm already checking it out but what do you all think my truck has that little delay? When shifting from reverse to drive? And that little jump when I put it to 1st?

 

My '95 does that too, and the transmission was rebuilt in September. My old '69 F250 with a C6 did it as well; before and after I rebuilt it. In fact I'm pretty sure every heavy duty automatic truck I've driven has done that.

 

As others have stated, that sounds like a bad u-joints or both u-joints.

Mileage is low, but internally, they can be bad.

I had the exact same problem when I bought my '95, 302, Eddie Bauer 4wd. I asked the owner and he said the rear joint was bad...And it was BAD. It kicked and bucked. I made him sign a paper stating that if it didn't make it back to my residence due to the damaged u-joint, he would hand me the money back and he could haul it away at his expense. I had to drive 85 miles with hills and interstate. Luckily I had a friend that drove his truck in case I encountered problems.

New Moog u-joints are like $30 for both.

 

Those are characteristics of the E4OD transmission.

 

Is your rear drive shaft in two pieces and has 3 U joints?

 

When my carrier support bearing isn't spaced correctly I will get a shudder on take off.