Strong vibration and noise from front end?

RenegadeMarine · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 12:16 am

So I was on my way home from class tonight, I was going about 45-50mph, and out of nowhere the front end started vibrating and shaking along with a loud humming noise. This happened right before I was coming up to a red light, as I slowed down the vibrating and shaking became more violent and the noise got louder and louder until I came to a stop!! After the light I turned onto a side street, I turned around in a driveway a couple doors down then got out to take a look, and didn't notice anything visually. So I decided to give it another go. As I drove away no vibration and no noise. Then about 5 miles down the road it started doing it again, just as loud and just as violent!! So I pulled into a driveway that had a gate across it, so I had to do a slow u-turn, during the u-turn the noise and vibration stopped again. I was only about a mile or so from home so I just continued to my house without incident. Does anybody have any Ideas as to what may have caused this? I am probably going to take it to the shop on the corner tomorrow, so I was hoping you guys could give me some ideas, to tell him what to look for.

Thanks
Brian

Budke · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 5:58 am

Hmm, maybe front drive shaft?

JeepinJarhead03 · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 1:54 pm

Very hard to diagnose, could be several things, eg. a CV acting up

If it were mine, probably one of the first things i would to was go get a few pints of differential grease and a bottle of friction modifier (if you have a LSD rear) and change the diff fluids and check for metal flakes

often a rear end (or front even when in or out of 4wd) will cause such symptoms and may not always produce the symptoms from the end of the vehicle that it's coming from

stuff that comes and goes are always a pita

quite possible for it to be a cv or front driveshaft as well, start out visually inspecting and go from there

Boiler · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:19 pm

Probably not it, but its easy to check: lugnuts.

Budke · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 2:25 pm

Boiler wrote:

Probably not it, but its easy to check: lugnuts.

Forgot to tighten them on a wheel once.
Scared the piss outta me!

RenegadeMarine · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 3:45 pm

Well I just got off the phone with the guy at the shop, he said that they drove it around quite a bit and couldn't get it to do what it did for me last night (that figures). He did notice that I have a warped rotor and bad pads, they did a visual inspection on the front suspension and drive shaft and didn't see anything wrong. I don't think that the rotors and brakes caused the symptoms that I experienced last night because it happened when I wasn't even touching the brakes, and it was shaking very violently and a very loud humming/grinding noise. It felt like something was seriously wrong. So I'm gonna have him do the brakes and then I guess I'm going to just drive it until it does it again or something falls off lol. I really don't know what else to do any other suggestions would be great.

Brian

Daksport · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 8:16 pm

By chance did you hit a decent size bump when this happened???

I had something similar to this a couple times before I figured out that one of the front shocks on my pickup needed to be replaced. When the tire hit the bump it started bouncing and didn't stop. It resulted in the truck and especially the steering wheel to start to vibrate violently. The only way to make it go stop vibrating was to slow right down and all but stop.

Just a thought.

RenegadeMarine · **Posted:** Tue Mar 16, 2010 9:35 pm

Daksport wrote:

By chance did you hit a decent size bump when this happened???

I had something similar to this a couple times before I figured out that one of the front shocks on my pickup needed to be replaced. When the tire hit the bump it started bouncing and didn't stop. It resulted in the truck and especially the steering wheel to start to vibrate violently. The only way to make it go stop vibrating was to slow right down and all but stop.

Just a thought.

Nope I didn't hit any bumps, the road was perfectly flat. So I just had him replace the pads and rotors, and I guess I will just wait and see if it does it again. Those pads were like paper thin, he said I was like 2 or 3 days from metal on metal! He couldn't get it to do it again, and I drove it for a bit and couldn't get it to do it again. So Im just gonna play the waiting game and see what happens.

Strong vibration and noise from front end?

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