Vibration under load?

[joutlaw]

I drive a 2000 Mazda Millenia with just under 120K miles. The car was vibrating when getting on interstate onramps and was getting a slight vibration around 70mph.

I figured the tires were out of balance so I got them rotated and balanced on November 1st. On the 2nd I headed out to Gatlinburg, TN, and once I started hitting any kind of hills the car would vibrate pretty bad under load. The vibration will now occur any variation of mph as long as the car is going uphill. If I go WOT it will vibrate throughout the RPM range as well. But if I am going downhill or coasting the vibrating stops. Even if I am going up a hill and let off the gas the vibrating will minimize.

At first I thought it could be a motor mount. I looked the mounts I could see on my car and they all looked pristine from what I could see. I figure there may be a lower mount I couldn't see easily but the upper and left and right mounts looked good... no torn rubber etc.

I then did a little searching and found this could be CV joint related. The thing is I don't get the clicking or popping when going around turns.

Has anyone else experienced a vibration under load and have any suggestions. I plan on doing this job myself, but don't want to just throw parts at it.

 

[Spydermag68]

Get you car checked out now...I had this happen to my Blazer and several things had to be replaced...including front tires

 

[BW86]

Is the car vibrating when idle?

Check your ball joints/tie rods.

jack your car up, hold the wheels at 12 and 6 and see if there is excessive play in the up and down motion - that's the ball joint. To check your tie rods put your hands at 3 and 9 and see if there is excessive play side to side.

 

[joutlaw]

No vibration at idle... No slop in the steering while driving and the car tracks true. It was last aligned in January 2006 ... front and rear.

I will try to get the car jacked up with the jack it came with. The weather is pretty cruddy here right now though.

FWIW... I'm not driving the car anymore... I carpool and have a secondary vehicle I am using when I need to drive.

 

[Juddog]

This exact issue happened to me; the fix ended up being getting new wheels (steel wheels, bought from tirerack.com) I ended up getting new wheels as a last ditch after replacing the CV joint as well as the ball joints and struts / shocks.

What ultimately got me to find out it was the wheels themselves, was when I had it at the tire place, they put it up on the lift and simply spun the wheel around and gave a visual examination - this was after having the wheels freshly balanced and aligned - and they noticed that even after the balance / alignment there was still a slight wobble. Once I put on the new wheels the ride went back to being smooth as hell.

 

[joutlaw]

Originally posted by: Juddog
This exact issue happened to me; the fix ended up being getting new wheels (steel wheels, bought from tirerack.com) I ended up getting new wheels as a last ditch after replacing the CV joint as well as the ball joints and struts / shocks.

What ultimately got me to find out it was the wheels themselves, was when I had it at the tire place, they put it up on the lift and simply spun the wheel around and gave a visual examination - this was after having the wheels freshly balanced and aligned - and they noticed that even after the balance / alignment there was still a slight wobble. Once I put on the new wheels the ride went back to being smooth as hell.

Dang... that doesn't good. My only issue is why would it have gotten progressively worse... seemed to go away after a balance and rotation, then got much worse the day after the balance and rotation.

I suppose I'm going to inspect the boots carefully. I noticed a lot of fluids in the plastic air dam and my oil and transmission levels were good. I'm hoping a cv boot ripped and spewed greese everywhere.

 

[Juddog]

Originally posted by: joutlaw

Originally posted by: Juddog
This exact issue happened to me; the fix ended up being getting new wheels (steel wheels, bought from tirerack.com) I ended up getting new wheels as a last ditch after replacing the CV joint as well as the ball joints and struts / shocks.

What ultimately got me to find out it was the wheels themselves, was when I had it at the tire place, they put it up on the lift and simply spun the wheel around and gave a visual examination - this was after having the wheels freshly balanced and aligned - and they noticed that even after the balance / alignment there was still a slight wobble. Once I put on the new wheels the ride went back to being smooth as hell.

Dang... that doesn't good. My only issue is why would it have gotten progressively worse... seemed to go away after a balance and rotation, then got much worse the day after the balance and rotation.

I suppose I'm going to inspect the boots carefully. I noticed a lot of fluids in the plastic air dam and my oil and transmission levels were good. I'm hoping a cv boot ripped and spewed greese everywhere.

To get some steel wheels from tirerack isn't really that expensive. I bought mine for $50 a piece. Compared with the hundreds of dollars I spent replacing the CV joints, ball joints, and rebalancing and alignment efforts, in hindsight it would have been a lot cheaper to simply have replaced the wheels themselves from the get-go. I didn't like the look of the steel wheels that much though (well... wifey didn't like it) so I ended up buying some cheap rims, and now my ride is smooth. The downside to continuing to drive on the wheels that were bad was that over time it led to greater wear on the entire car from the vibration.

CV joints, when bad, typically make a clicking sound when you are turning really far one direction or the other. What you really need to do is put the car up on a lift, inspect the CV joints (look for cracks or grease leaking out), inspect the tire itself for play (see if you can move the wheel a little bit from side to side with your hand, if you can that might be the ball joint), or simply rotate the wheel, spin it if you can, and see if the wheel itself wobbles.

 

[jdkick]

I had something similar with my Jetta and in my particular case it did in fact turn out to be the inner joint on the passenger side.

The symptom was a thumping/vibration/wobble under moderate-to-hard acceleration - didn't matter if I was accelerating to 50kph or 100kph and continued when I switched from my summer times/alloys to my winter tires/steelies. I spent a fair bit of time crawling around the front end then had it checked out by two separate and trustworthy mechanics and everything was in order (slight wear on my front sway bar bushings). While I was on vacation I left the car with on mechanic who pulled the axles and found one joint was noticeably worn. He replaced the joint and the symptom was nearly 100% gone. It's been two years and i'm starting to get a slight wobble again... thinking it's the other side.

 

[joutlaw]

Well it turns out the CV joint was bad.

I got under the car yesterday and the outer joints on both sides were good. I was pretty shocked by that, but knew I wasn't getting the clicking. I decided to get my OBDII reader out and scan the codes to see if something new came up. It did in fact but it's not related... I have an O2 sensor out now.

So I inspected further and the boot nearest to the transaxle/differential was completely ripped and I could see the CV joint itself. Not too good! There was grease everywhere. I only looked at the passenger side just to conclude the CV joint was the problem so I could go ahead and order the parts.

I ended up getting 2 new cv joints for 59.99 each off rockauto.com with no core charge. Seems cheap, but I think these will outlive the car... it's currently at 119K or so.

So basically I think the reason I didn't get the clicking is the inner joint must only move up and down where the outer joints rotate left or right when you turn... when they go out and lose their greese they must bind and that's when get the clicking sounds.