Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Bad Vibrating at highway speeds! Totally confused!

Okay I'm totally confused and getting very upset. I have a 2000 ford contour with the 2.5 duratech. In the past few months there have been times where it will start vibrating all of the sudden really bad. Sometimes it smooths out and sometimes it gets worse. At first I thought maybe the alignment was off and the tires were out of balance so I had both of these done. It smoothed it out for a few weeks and then went back to vibrating and shaking the steering wheel like crazy. I then decided maybe it was a brake issue so I replace both the pads and the rotors on both sides and it pretty much quit for a few more weeks then it started doing it really bad. I talked to some people and they said it could be a warped rotor so I bought another brand new rotor and replaced it with the side that was making noise and it drove like a new car for about a week. Now it is starting to vibrate again. The other day I noticed it was driving kind of funny so I took look all around and found out I had a really low tire and there was a screw in it. I fixed it and now driving on the freeway my whole car is shaking and it shakes so bad when you talk its like your voice is talking through a fan. I am totally confused and everytime I take my car into a shop no matter what the problem has been the mechanics are always baffled because the computer won't tell them whats wrong so therefore they have no clue especially when its an issue the computer cant tell them. I usually do some research on here and always find what the problem is but this one has me totally irratated and baffled, please help.

yeah i have that problem put mine only does it at about 50 mph then it gets worse as i speed up to 70 mph then at 80 mph its gone. confuses the hell out of me. maybe theses guys can help me out to. im thinking it might me my motor mounts or tranny, maybe even my suspension. sorry can be any more help.

Yeah mine gets worse the faster I go and it seems like its getting bad gas mileage too.

Excel4600c and Travis, clean your MAF sensor.

MAF cleaning.
http://www.contour.org/mods/mods.php?s=howto&displayid=36
and
http://www.contour.org/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=zetecmaint&Number=989728&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=1&vc=1

and from Autozone. In addition, you don't need to remove the clamp next to the upper air filter housing. Just spray through the housing. You do need to remove the clamp between the MAF and Inlet Air Duct (accordian tube?)
http://www.autozone.com/servlet/UiBroker?ForwardPage=/az/cds/en_us/0900823d/80/1b/cb/25/0900823d801bcb25.jsp

In addition, Travis, did they just put in a plug on your tire. Might need to balance the tires and torque lug nuts to specs too. In addition, sometimes plugs cause bad vibration during high speeds.

I had a CV joint go bad and it caused bad highway speed shaking. Shook the car SO hard that the speedo and tach needles would flutter back and forth!!

Around town it felt fine except I could hear a very slight wobbling sound. The way I understand it, the prolonged high speed travel allowed the joint to loosen up and it probably made the conditions right for it throwing itself out of balance, due to the slack in the worn joint. The vibrations only occured under load, so I would have to have my foot on the gas to make it vibrate..... let off and coast and it would not do it anymore. After the axle was replaced it was nice and smooth again. On mine it was just the right side that was bad.. also happened to be the side with a torn boot!

Might take a close look at your CV's and check for torn boots and or slack in the joints.

HTH