Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Troubleshooting Chronic vibration when acclerating around 65-75mph

I've got a chronic vibration problem which has been annoying me for years that no one has been able to diagnose since i bought my car 4 years ago and was wondering if anyone can offer some advice...

It seems i have a major vibration when accelerating around 65-75mph. No vibration is detectable at idle or at any speeds lower then around 65mph.

If i'm not accelerating at the problem speed everything is smooth. When i bought the car the issue seemed to be a lot less noticable and it seems to get worse as i've been driving for 15 minutes or so and the car heats up. Sometimes if i've let the car sit for a while it's smooth at 65. If i let go of the wheel for a second when accelerating i can see the wheel move right to left about 1/8th of an inch.

So far i've had new tires and had the rims checked for problems and then balanced. I thought i had the cause tracked down. I also had a different vibration at idle since i bought the car which i thought was normal for an SVT. After driving a friends car i did some snooping and found that my tranny mount bolt had broken, again since i probably bought the car. I did some research and saw that people who had broken tranny mount bolts described similar vibrations so i replaced the bolt and things smoothed out at idle where they had been rough but still no change in the vibration at 65.

I'm trying to figure out what could be wrong. Keep in mind this has been happening since i bought the car about 40,000 miles ago. Could the fact that the tranny mount was broken for so long have bent an axle? Maybe a bad CV joint? The tranny was pretty much riding on the subframe for that length of time.

I've had issues before like this with other cars but it got progressivly worse as i accelerated and continued as speeds increased. After 75mph in this case everything is silky smooth again.

The only other clue i can give is i have a squeek coming from what seems like maybe the drivers side hub area that occurs when the car gets warmed up. If it's cold i can't hear it at all. It's a rotational squeek and if i'm at low speeds 5mph or less you can hear the squeek as the wheel rotates until i apply the brakes. When braking the squeek will go away until i release the brake and then it will start again. I'm not sure if this is related to the vibration but figured i'd mention it.

The mechanics i've had look at the car are stumped. (Ford and independent) Any ideas would be hugely helpfull...

Thanks!

Have you done the wheel bearing and tie-rod/ball joint tests?

Jack up the car. Place on jack stands.

Grasp wheel at 12 and 6 o'clock and push in and out. Any movement would make the Wheel Bearing suspect.

9 and 3 o'clock - tie-rod/ball joint.

I battled a vibration problem for 3 years. It only happened when I accelerated (although mine happened at all speeds). Had 2 sets of remanufactured axles installed, never fixed it. Had new Ford axles installed last Dec, vibe is gone. If you're going to look into the axles, don't waste your time w/ remanufactured ones. Aparently AutoZone has nice new axles as well.

So is there a way to check if you have a bad axle? Is it possible to bend an axle?