05 escape with clunking/thumping noise in left front
 

Ok, we just got our 2005 Escape 4wd vehicle back from the Stealership after they charged us to look at the car cause they found uneven tires (inner treads on rear tires are wearing) even though we just had an allignment done. The reason why we brought it to the dealer was cause the vehicle has a thumping/clunking noise in the left front area when you are driving. Noticeable 40 mph and above. The faster you go, the faster the thumping gets. Dealership says it is cause the tires are wearing unevenly. Does anyone know what this could be caused by? Dealership (supposedly) checked the driveline system and can not find anything (of course cause that would be covered under warranty and they will not make money). I am going to try and bring it to another dealership, one that does the work on my police departments cars.

Any help would be greatly apprecaited as my wife is extremely concerned as she is now 6 mos pregnant.

Thanks,

Brian

Depending on how many miles are on it, check out the previous post from yesterday on clunking in front end. Could be the stabilizer bar links but I don't think this would cause uneven wear on the tires unless they have been bad for a long while. Sounds more like to me like it could be a bad tire. Hope this helps!!! and Congrats.....

I rotated the tires to be sure that the noise would not be tire related. If it was tire related, wouldn't the noise go from the front to the back? The tires on the front are in excellent condition now.

Mileage now is at 31,000 miles. Vehicle has the 4wd option although the stealership says it is basically all wheel drive since it is an automatic 4wd engagement.

check the play in those stabilizer bar links. There should not be much! Those bar links are only $12-20 even from the dealer and they are easy to install. Mine is an '02 2WD I would hope yours would be the same. I am not a mechanic but it fixed my problem, having those replaced. The dealer told me that this is a common problem and these wear out frequently. Mine had around 51,000 when they went bad. Hope this helps....

I wonder if the 4wd would be different than the 2wd. I will check it as the car only has 31,000 miles on it.

It could be as the 4WD suspension may be a little different. At least you can ask the dealer if they are somewhat honest they will tell you. Or maybe look it up on another website.

Well, my wife is taking my F150 tomorrow so I can check out her car and bring it to my old mechanics job so they can reaffirm the problem.

Update.. Just came back from my old job which was at a tire center and we had the car on the lift. We put the tires on a wheel balancer and manually spun the wheel around and we noticed some areas that were lower than others. This is probably what the noise is. Has anyone else ever had a similar problem like this? The tires are made by General and all 4 tires seem to be doing this hi and low spots. What would cause this condition?

The OEM tires are cheap and could cause noise problems. You stated there was a clunking noise. The tires aren't going to clunk. At least I consider a clunk to be something metallic or some other material hitting something else. I would describe tire noise as something else.

The stabilizer links "usually" cause noise at low speeds in tight corners or going over bumps. You usually don't hear the links at higher speeds since you've got more force being applied in that nylon ball joint to prevent popping back and forth.

Bananaboat,

The noise I hear sounds like a low flying helicopter. Very similar to the noise a tire would make if someone was kicking or hitting the sidewall of the tire with a foot or bat.

Ford43,

I checked the end links for the sway bar (boy are those things long and cheap looking) and they did not seem to have any play in them in/out, up/down or side to side.

The tires did have some very noticeable differences in height from on section of tread to the next. Basically one square of the tread was higher than the next and then went back down two squares later. This was more noticeable on the inside tread.

I stopped by another Ford dealership today and the one mechanic actually came out and looked at the car. He said that it could be a tire noise but might be something else and to make an appointment for the car. He did notice that the tires were wearing on the outer treads more than the center part which he said the tires were underinflated. I replied that the tires have always been set at 30 psi and his reply to me was that the tires actually wear better set at 35 psi. This would explain why the center part of the tread was not wearing correctly.

If its more of a thumping noise than a clunking noise it could be the tires. The Continentals that are often installed on Escapes are notorious for becoming noisy due to belts in the tires becoming "loose". The tires wear really well and don't obviously have a defect but they become quite noisy. Unfortunately, I don't know how you can confirm this without putting different tires on your Escape unless you have a friend who would let you swap wheels/tires for a test.

I have an 05 Escape that had the same noise and it was the tires. I replaced the junk and I do mean junk Continental tires with some Kuhmo tires and the noise magically went away?! C'mon Ford, I love the Escape, but don't cheap out on the tires.

Ok, well, my wife got new tires. She went with the Bridgestone Dueler H/L tires and she loves them. Like the previous post, the thumping noise magically went away! Didn't Ford learn with the tire problem with the Explorers? Sad thing is cause the tires are not warrantied by Ford, we had to eat the cost of $135 a tire. At least we got good tires on the car now and it is just over a year old!

The most important thing to remember about tires are to rotate them at least every 6,000 - 7,000 miles ( every other oil change ) with any brand of tire. I also always recommend a four wheel alignment with any set of 4 new tires. An $80 alignment is always better than premature tire wear :) Also on our 03 Escape the oe tires only lasted 35,000 miles. I believe those Conti trac tires are only supposed to last 40,000 anyway. Just remember to rotate often, from front to back without crossing them over. :)

My Conti's lasted 65,000 miles but they howled like scalded cats.