My 2008 ford Escape
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More fun with the truck

My 2008 ford EscapeAs most of you who have visited my page before will know, I own a 2008 Ford Escape, the XLT package with all wheel drive. In the winter it performed like a champ, except for  minor little issue… filling up the gas tank in temperatures below 0’C was painful. I have since found out that Ford issued a TSB about filling up in cold temperatures… yeah, not that it does me any good. Over all, I still rate it a good little truck (yes, I call it my truck). By the way, here’s my updated Fuelly banner:

So, back to why I am discussing my truck, yet again. A few weeks ago, I started to notice a vibration while turning and accelerating at the same time. It wasn’t that bad at first, and definitely not as bad as when the ABS Tone Ring (This link will show you a bad ring, and how to replace it) went bad on me in March, which I don’t think I wrote about… anyway, the little metal ring cost $18, the labour almost $400… yeah, back to the new problem.

Over the next few weeks, the vibration has been getting worse, but I have been able to pin down some facts.

  • Vibration is noticeable while accelerating between 18 and 24 km/h. Accelerating really slowly makes it less noticeable.
  • Vibration is again noted between 43 and 48 km/h, but since the truck is moving faster it is at a higher frequency.
  • A slight vibration can be felt while decelerating through the above speed ranges.
  • Climbing my hill (Park Ave) at ~20km/h will cause the vibration to be so strong it shakes the crap out of the centre console.

Now, I took it into a repair shop and they diagnosed a bad from swat bar link, again a cheap part (though they quoted me $70, I can get them online for closer to $20) with a nice labour charge dumped on top. This did not fix the problem… So, being me, I went all Google ninja and have come to the conclusion that the problem lies in the drive train linkage from the front of the truck to the rear.
Today (maybe), I’ll be having my brother in-law drop the drive train down and look at the housing and u-joints, as we suspect they might be ceased. I will update the outcome later.