I had the shim kit installed for the shutter. It was a lot better on take off, but had a bad vibration at 55-65 mph. It was kind of like trading one problem for another.

 

I also had the shudder as described and the dealer installed 2 shims and the problem has pretty much gone away.

 

I just recently recieved my truck back from a rear end accident. I have a new drive line from the tranny to the rear end. I did not have the shutter, but I do now. I crawled under and there is some very specific instructions about the drive shafts being balanced. I am getting a good vibration from about 45-65 mph. I am still working with the dealer on this. I will relay any information.

 

Well the dealer determined my shutter was a faulty injector and is not in the process of replacing it. Sure hope I don't have any more of these problems.

 

'04 F-250 Supercab XLT, PSD 5spd auto, somewhere around 2500miles. Violent shudder when crusing between 50-75. I've mentioned this in the thread titled "Violent Shudder" and my dealer is clueless and as mentioned in the other thread the service manager and I will be talking about a buy back First Ford...Last Ford.... The $40,780 headache!

 

I have a 2x4 psd. I had a "clunking" noise when auto shifted beween 2nd and 3rd. Dealer can't or don't know how to fix it. I decided to take off the rear drive shaft and see if splines needed greasing. They actually have some kind of plastic coating with hardly any visable grease at all. Anyway that didn't help the problem, - - but in the process I found two other interesting things.

I had a very bad vibration at low speed when starting from a stop.

1) You can probably solve the shaft vibration problem by revolving the rear shaft to a different spline relationship. I inadvertantly did this on reinstalling the driveshaft and I now happily have only the very slightest trace of a vibration.

2) The rubber boot that covers the spline had two non-reusable thin metal clamps, one at each end. I was going to replace them with plastic ties, but was out of them so I used adjustable stainless hose clamps until I bought some more ties. You might be able to visualize these hose clamps. They have a screw adjuster which added a small amount of weight on one side of the shaft. which in turn caused the truck to vibrate like crazy over a broad mph range. I installed the plastic ties and for all practical purposes, no vibration. Conclusion = The rear shaft is very sensitive to balance and a person might try putting a SS hose clamp on it and rotating it (hit and miss) to solve vibration problems. Also, it has occured to me that if this shaft is that sensitive a person could buy lead tape at golf pro shops and experiment with securing pieces of self adhering lead tape to accomplish the same thing.

You know something else that I question. The center support bearing allows the shaft to move 3/16" . I wonder if this is normal. It seems that this might allow for movement "harmonics" to take place between the front and rear shaft which could shafts to be more susceptable to vibration.

Just some thoughts. give me some responses or maybe successes.

 

I'm baffled with this "hit and miss" idea....I'm not paying half a years salary for a truck to play games of "hit and miss"...Man I'm glad I have a company car, if I had to drive that thing all the time... I might not have the luxary of being able to read FTE in prision :-p.... I guess there is one bennefit.... "My Trucks Better Than Yours! It Doubbles As A Massage Chair!"

 

Anybody got a shop manual? These driveshafts shouldn't be that sensitive I would think. What happens when you get mud on them while out in the mud? Mine is currently pretty dirty underneath with dried mud (It's a REAL 4WD ) and I don't get much vibration. I have had it in some serious mud shortly after I got it to get the mesquite pinstriping on it. After getting out of the mud and onto the highway. It shook a little. Sort of like a dog shaking to get rid of water on their coat. Then it settled down ok.

 

When we don't have the equipment to balance a drive shaft, but there are some simple things we can try that just might solve our problem (SS hose clamp, lead tape, etc.) , why not give it a shot? To do these things are a heck of a lot easier than going from dealer to dealer and losing the use of your truck for days on end. One dealer says that the shudder is normal and the second dealer says they have just the thing to fix it (reflash). They did reflash it, with predictable results. I can go out to my garage right now and put a SS hose clamp on that drive shaft and make it vibrate and shudder like crazy. Sooooo - - we can alter the balance of our trucks drive shaft easily, but you might have to move things around once or twice. Gowan, you won't even get dirty.

 

Sounds pretty easy when you know what it is that your talking about! I'm by no means a mechanic, have no idea what an ss clamp is, and sure am not willing to risk messing around with fixes for my truck that I have no idea what they will do!