bad vibration

[the big D]

hi

I am driving a 1987 tercel 4wd sr5; currently running 13 inch snowtires.

I was driving home last night when I started feeling a vibration. It starts at about 50kph (35mph) and is the worst at about 80kph (50mph), once i get up to about 100kph (60mph) it goes away a little bit but is still really bad. The front bearing seem ok, the u-joints on the rear driveshaft and propshaft seem allright, and the all the sway bar and steering joints feel snug. When I turn either direction at full lock I get a slight clicking but only very slight. I don't think it is tires, it felt much stronger than a blown belt and all the lug nuts were tight.
Any ideas?
CV shafts?
Propshaft out of balance?

Thanks.

[the big D]

Also, I can feel this vibration through the car and the steering wheel.

[dlb]

maybe the weights on one or more of the wheels came off recently, making the wheel(s) out of balance. not likely a CV, as that should be more of a clunk or click.

[Petros]

Welcome to the list!
where do you live? sounds to me like wheel out of balance, or could be a bad CV axle. A tire shop can check the balance, you can check the CV axle yourself, try putting the steering to full lock and accelerate (try each side). IF you get clunking on one or the the other, it is likely the CV axle. You can verify this with the steering straight ahead, trans in neutral (car off) and than you try and turn the axle by hand. There should be zero play in the CV joint, any play (small amount of rotational play in the axle) means it is shot. It will cause vibration and the steering to wiggle back and forth when you accelerate at higher speeds.

pretty rare to have a drive shaft out of balance (unless it was damaged somehow, visual inspection would tell you that). Sometimes the universal joints on the drive shaft can be shot and cause a vibration, but it is pretty rare they would get bad enough to cause a bad vibration. A simple test is to take it in and out of 4wd and 2wd at hwy speeds where you have the vibration. The vibration should get less or go away.

[Lil Beast]

Also check the level of gear oil in the differentials, it happen to my friends wagon. When he first bought the car it was driving fine and from a day to another the whole car start vibrating so he brought it to me start looking for what could be loose or out of alignment couldn't find nothing, so went for a spin and at about 50 klik I felt something vibrating but couldn't tell wich wheel felt more like the whole middle. Decided to look up the diffs the front one was empty, fill it back up, went back to normal. He ask me where the fluid went and I answered that it's kind of normal on car 20+ year not many people services those parts unless they break, the seals wears out over time make a drip fall a the time after the years it goes empty.

[the big D]

Hey everyone,
Thanks for all the help!
I checked the wheels and there didn't seem to be any weights missing so I checked the cv's. The driver's side had a fair bit of slop in it so i replaced it and that seems to have cleared up the problem.

Thanks!