Massive vibration over 60

[[email protected]]

Hello all, I have a 2004 Tiffin Phaeton 40 foot diesel pusher on a freightliner chassis.  I have been experiencing massive vibration.  I replaced the front brakes and drums.  I also had all wheels balanced and then tried sand ring balancers.  This has helped but still vibrating.  I bought this used and drove it from Connecticut to New Jersey.  No problems until second trip

 

[Back2PA]

Check the u joints

 

[Old Racer]

Belt going bad in tire?

 

[jubileee]

X2 on bad belt in tire

 

[[email protected]]

How can you tell which tire?  Looking at them, they seem fine.

 

[Rene T]

How can you tell which tire?  Looking at them, they seem fine.

Jack them up and spin them by hand and see if they are out of round. It may not be that because you said you had them balanced. The guy who balanced them would, I hope, had seen that.

 

[kdbgoat]

Have you checked the date codes on all your tires?
Click on the link below if you're not sure how to do this:
http://www.rvforum.net/joomla/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=202:tire-manufacturing-date-codes&catid=27&Itemid=132

 

[jubileee]

Sometimes a bad belt in a truck tire is difficult to find by jacking up, spinning, observing, or balancing. Something to do with loading of the tire. All my trucks have 24:5 tires and run the liquid Mercury ring balancers. I have located a bad tire by running at vibration or "hop" speed for a few minutes, then stop, jump out and shoot shocks with infrared temp gun. Make sure all shocks are in good shape and at ambient temperature before doing this. The bad axle shock will be much warmer. You can narrow it down to one of the two tires on the duals. No need to do this on steer axle. Engine heat will throw off test. Anyway, if it's a steer tire, it will be shaking the steering wheel and column.

 

[[email protected]]

I checked the tire codes.  5007.  I guess I should replace them all.  Should I replace or rethread?  New to this so I am not sure the difference.  Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[[email protected]]

I jacked them up and spun by hand.  No visible signs of out of round.

 

[kdbgoat]

Don't use retreads, that's just false economy. The tires you have are on borrowed time. The only trip I would take in that coach would be straight to a tire shop for all new tires. Please be aware, if you procrastinate and decide to wait until after the next trip or two, you can experience a blowout and likely to cause considerable damage to your coach. You're one of the lucky ones that got a warning from your tires that something bad is about to happen. Were I you, I'd strongly heed the warning.

 

[Back2PA]

Should I replace or rethread?

Definitely replace. Retread is an option for truckers who put so many miles on their tires that they wear out the tread but the casings are still young and in good shape. RVs are exactly the opposite. Vary rare to wear out the tread before the tires become too old.

I would still have the u-joints checked. Easy to have someone do it in just a few minutes. I had a strong vibration on my coach just a few months ago and because I had some other issues we had trouble tracking it down. Turned out to be a severely worn u-joint that was near failure.

 

[kdbgoat]

Look at post #6 for a recent real life experience another member here had:
http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,95068.msg857703.html#msg857703

Here's another thread, a bit old, but still relevent:
http://www.rvforum.net/SMF_forum/index.php/topic,23749.msg229908.html#msg229908

 

[William52]

Hello all, I have a 2004 Tiffin Phaeton 40 foot diesel pusher on a freightliner chassis.  I have been experiencing massive vibration.  I replaced the front brakes and drums.  I also had all wheels balanced and then tried sand ring balancers.  This has helped but still vibrating.  I bought this used and drove it from Connecticut to New Jersey.  No problems until second trip

    Vibe when coast or slight apply of accel, or Does it change from acceleration to coast, if its only under load driveline. If its pretty much all the time, Tires or when you brake could be suspension or brakes. Sometimes its hard to tell. The 50th week of 2007 the tires are very suspect.

 

[[email protected]]

I will be getting all tires replaced tomorrow and heading to upstate NY this weekend.  Will let everyone know how the new tires work.  Thanks again everyone for the help.

 

[PatStab]

I had that happen, it turned out the new brake drums were the wrong ones.  At Spartan they had ordered in 3 different
sets in the rear.  My motorhome is a very old 92 Eagle.  It did ok till I almost got home then it was awful.  I tried contacting
them, they didn't respond and I couldn't drive back.  I took it to a local semi repair place, he dismounted them and said these
were the wrong drums, they were 1/4" to big.  Mine are the old kind, can't remember seems like mounted on a hub, I may
be wrong, but what happened is they looked ok but they wobbled.  He changed them and no more issues.    I'm not saying
this is your issue, just what happened to me.  I left the new ones and told them to give them to some trucker that could
use them, they weren't going to buy them from me anyway and hopefully my loss was someone else's gain.  I'm just
glad I found out what it was before something messed up.  The fronts were fine, it was the rear ones.

 

[farmerick4u]

I recently learned a very expensive lesson on my 97 tioga. In the past, while tripping, I had noticed that when running over 60 mph, I detected a vibration. I failed to follow up. Last month while on a return trip, after two flats and a blowout, I became the proud owner of four brand new dually tires! The tire service showed me how to look for signs of bad tires. First they showed me how to look for small chips where the treads start flaking away and to look for bulges or bubbles on the tire. Also learned where to look for the date codes on my tires. After researching this info, I also learned that even if these signs are not there, you might consider replacements after at least seven to ten years. I'm sure this is dependent on mh usage. I can only say that after the tire replacement, the over 60 vibrations stopped and I then had to be careful about going over 70! Good luck!!

 

[JSW]

On my 2004 HR Ambassador that same kind of vibration was caused by failed u-joints.  Cost to replace was over $4,000.  Thankfully, my Good Sam ESP paid for the repair done by Cummins in Houston.  I've had tire failures as well but this was much more serious and vibration just got unbearable in just about 400 miles of driving.  (I was that far from home.)

 

[WILDEBILL308]

The driveshaft on a diesel is only about 3ft long but is often not properly greased during maintenance. If you don't get fresh grease out of each cap you need to remove and disassemble it to find out why.
Bill

 

[Ernie n Tara]

I cannot imagine what cost $4, 000 to replace u-joints! :-[ it takes about 30 minutes maximum to remove or replace the driveshaft and at most a few hundred for the u-joints themselves ($20-50 for automotive).

Ernie