Two vibrations down, one to go...

[Steve M]

When I first bought my truck, it had a drive shaft out of round. I felt the pulsating vibration from a low speed and it would get worse up to 70mph. The dealership traded the driveshaft with another truck and cured it. A couple of weeks ago, I had the weighted hydro boost hose installed to cure the steering wheel and peddle buzz. That works great! I still have a lower frequency vibration that starts around the 2100rpm drone and is worse at 2700rpm. It does it driving or sitting still in neutral or park. It feels like the torque converter or something heavy is out of balance. Not like the higher frequency buzz that the weighted hose took care of. And it's enough to blurr the view in the rear view mirror enough that I can't tell what's behind me. Anyone else have this vibration? I don't recall my '01. 5 doing this. My '95 and '98 never saw 2700rpm that I can recall. Power is great at 2700 for climbing the steep ones and the motor is quiet with no smoke. Just the harsh vibration.

 

[Blakers]

Originally posted by Steve M

It feels like the torque converter or something heavy is out of balance.

Yea, there's a lot of mass inside that engine going around and up and down, i. e. , those big connecting rods. I hardly ever run mine up that high. It's way past the max torque anyway.

 

[Steve M]

You're right about that but peak torque runs all the way to peak HP at 2900rpm. If you need to use gear reduction to multiply some torque for the steep hills, that flat torque band comes in handy. On my standard output,



460 X . 69(O/D) X 4. 10= 1301ft/lbs to the rear axle



Lock out O/D and,



460 X 1(3rd) X 4. 10=1886ft/lbs to the rear axle



The 325/600 makes as much torque/HP at 2100rpm in O/D as mine does at 2900rpm in 3rd to the rear axle. The 600 makes a big difference over my SO. So I have to use 3rd in the hills towing our 5th wheel. 2900rpm doesn't hurt a thing. Cummins runs these engines at peak HP for hundreds of hours at a time. In building generator sets, the 5. 9 goes from ice cold to 2900rpm full load for at least half hour. I keep mine under 2000rpm and go easy until it warms up. Power turns down pretty quick over 2900rpm so that's about the max even though redline is 3200rpm.

Momma's Durango sees 5200rpm on just about every interstate on-ramp when I'm driving! Doesn't hurt a thing...

 

[jrikli]

Vibrations from 68 to 73 mph

I just had my 2004 checked out by Rod, the service manager at Woodhouse in Blair, NE. He had fixed the p/s hose that took some of the vibration out. The official response on the existing vibration is that ALL of the 2003/2004 shortbed diesels with tall gears have this rumble caused by engine harmonics. This is the official word from the district troubleshooter. I have 4300 miles and have talked to every 2003/2004 driver I see and sure enough, they have it too but just endure it. That is the advice I received, "Just drive it and put up with it, you can't do any damage". Rod mentioned that it may be the engine change combined with the change in the frame material. Do you guys concur?

 

[curatchko]

Nope, I don't concure.



I'm a pretty Savy mechanical type and I'm not going out on the limb... this is pretty basic stuff in my opinion.



This is is a high speed rotating vibration. Not drone, not tires. Mine is mph related. Which says it all.



A local driveshaft shop is only charging 20 bucks to balance a shaft, so if the dealer is too stupid to figure this out, then it's not too big a deal.



My dealer does have a rear driveshaft coming in, but I'm not convinced it's not the front... .

 

[cpizz]

I am beginning to believe that. I have had two 4x4 regular cab dually's now ('03 and '04). Both have more vibrations than the 2nd gens did. On my '03 I had the front drive shaft issue and the p/s hose issue. Once fixed some of the vibrations went away. But not all! Same thing on the '04 with the p/s hose. The vibrations seem to be worse sometimes than others. It may be the frame. Since it is now tubular, it maybe picking up more harmonics than the older trucks did. Hence the 140" wheelbase is more affected than the 160" wheelbase. I don't know but there has to be an answer to this mystery somewhere.

 

[Gadgetman]

I had my front driveshaft replaced,it didn't change a thing. But it was a lot less vibration when I drove it for a couple of weeks without the front driveshaft... ...

 

[jungledave]

I have the same type of vibration at all speeds as soon as it is in OD. Then it gets bad, high frequency at 60 to 80 mph and vibrates the rear view mirror. It cycles and you cansee the mirror vibrate on and off withe the vibration. Dealer changed rear shaft, waste of time. Some kinda chrysler tech is gonna look at it next. This might be strike three on this trip.

 

[BFoate]

I contacted American Axle the other day to follow up on their progress for a solution to the problem of the "cycling" vibration that jungledave is referencing. Their assessment of the problem points to normal harmonics from the axles (85 mhz) phasing in and out with the normal harmonics (185 mhz) from the Cummins which is passed on through the transfer case. The drive shaft is acting, more or less, as a bowstring between the two vibration points and ideally "would" have canceled the two vibrations using an appropriate internal damper at each end. They have successfully solved the problem in the two wheel drive units, but the four wheel drive units are presenting additonal problems in getting the 185 herts damper fitted to the transfer case end of the shaft. When, and if, they succeed, that should solve the problem. In any event, they indicated that this cycling vibration problem should not cause any damage to the drive train and that the drive shaft itself had been tested at full load/stress under these conditions for well past the designated duration without failures. Like others have said, maybe it doesn't cause damage, but it's pretty damn annoying never the less.



We have this cycling vibration issue on our 2003 2500 but took it in for the PS hose TSB to see if that might help to some degree. On the drive to the dealer the cruise control quit working and the transmission wouldn't shift into overdirve. Vibration related? I wonder. The dealer had to order some parts to fix the cruise control problem, and may have flashed the computer, but was still working on the overdrive issue as of yesterday. I should probably post this question new, but has anyone else had this pair of problems?

 

[nickleinonen]

hmm... . i don't know if my engine has bad vibes up that high eh... the only time i'll see rpm that high is accelarating hard . other than that, it's always below 2000 rpm and most of that time, is ±1600 rpm

 

[DShirk]

I just bought my first Cummins. 04. 5 h. o. and it vibrates annoyingly between 68 and 85 mph.

Took it to the trusty Chrysler dealer for the cure, and they said Chrysler doesn't have a cure for this yet. They tried various things, and told me not to worry. But lets get real. Motorheads know that vibration causes heat & wear. This is not a good thing.

I just thought I'd get on here to see if you-all are setting some sort of time limit on this fix. We really need to get this fixed quick or get compensated.