simpsonfab

The wheels I have now are balanced on the inner edge of the wheel and at about center of the wheel and are fine. The last wheels I had just had a static balance, which means they were just balanced in one place, and the truck shook violently, I tried balancing them in center and the inner edge and the shake was still there. The only fix was balancing at the inner and outer edge, which looked horrible because I had weights on the surface of very expensive wheels. As for the drive shaft, I took it a drive line place and had them chuck it up on their balancer. He called me back there and had me listen to the shaft spin so I could hear what he was hearing. It sounded like a basketball dribbling in there very fast until what ever it was finally stuck in one place. The drive line guy then showed me where the machine was telling him to add weights because the drive line was out of balance. Every time we stopped and started the spinning of the shaft, the noise was always there and the machine would request weights in different spot and for different amounts each time. I was shown different examples of the stuff that usually gets put in drive shafts to quiet them down, but did not cut open my shaft to see for sure what was in there. My first step was to take it back to the dealer and see what they were going to do about it. The wheels I have now are balanced on the inner edge of the wheel and at about center of the wheel and are fine. The last wheels I had just had a static balance, which means they were just balanced in one place, and the truck shook violently, I tried balancing them in center and the inner edge and the shake was still there. The only fix was balancing at the inner and outer edge, which looked horrible because I had weights on the surface of very expensive wheels. As for the drive shaft, I took it a drive line place and had them chuck it up on their balancer. He called me back there and had me listen to the shaft spin so I could hear what he was hearing. It sounded like a basketball dribbling in there very fast until what ever it was finally stuck in one place. The drive line guy then showed me where the machine was telling him to add weights because the drive line was out of balance. Every time we stopped and started the spinning of the shaft, the noise was always there and the machine would request weights in different spot and for different amounts each time. I was shown different examples of the stuff that usually gets put in drive shafts to quiet them down, but did not cut open my shaft to see for sure what was in there. My first step was to take it back to the dealer and see what they were going to do about it.

Hi, my name is Jeff and I have been battling with an intermittent drive line vibration since almost day 1 on my 2014 GM 1500 2wd 4dr short bed. I have played with drive line angles, tire balance, and anything else I could think of until finally I found the issue. To give you a bit more information, I actually found 3 different vibrations. 1) when the engine drops from v8 to 4cyl mode, the engine will shake noticeably like the engine is misfiring. This is normal due to the engine now running on 4 cylinders instead of 8 to save gas. 2) The tires have to have a true, full width balance or a full body shake will be experienced at freeway speeds. The whole truck shakes and even vibrates the side mirrors till they get blurry. (A static balance will not cut it, the wheels need a weights in two different spots) 3) The intermittent drive line vibration. I took my drive shaft to a drive line place to have the balance checked, when spinning up on the balancer, I could hear something inside the drive shaft bouncing around until just the right RPM and then the object stopped moving and the drive shaft was out of balance. We stopped the drive shaft and re-spun it. The same noise was heard and when the object stopped moving, the machine required a different amount of weight to balance the shaft. Each time we spun up the drive shaft, a different weight was required and some times no weight. What I found out is that there is a sound resonator in the drive shaft that prevents noise from resonating through the drive line, some drive line manufacturers use a cardboard cylinder with a seem cut in it and others use a rubberized foam. both are compressed, shoved into the driveshaft, and then are supposed to re-coil and fit tight. Based on the sound, it sounds like my drive shaft resonator was made of cardboard and has been progressively breaking apart every time I drive the truck. I have since taken my truck into the dealer and they are replacing the drive shaft. Hopefully this will be the end of this problem. I posted this in hopes that it could help others out there.