s-cort shakes @ high speed

4059 Views 53 Replies 10 Participants Last post by Kenny, Dec 29, 2002

siragan

Discussion Starter · Dec 23, 2002

I was out on a car trip, and after getting brand spankin yokohama tires, and getting the whole balance/alignment job, my s-cort STILL shakes at high speeds.

The last pair of tires had a very strange wear pattern on the rear left wheel:
if you viewed the wheel from the side, instead of seeing a nice, circular tire, mine looked more like a 10-pointed star, only the points of that star weren´t straight points, more like rounded. In other words, the tread of the tire was really low in one place, then you´d travel along the circumference of the wheel another couple inches, and the tread was high again. It was like the tread was periodic wave extending itself along the circumference of the tire, if that makes any sense.

anyway, this problem totally baffled me, but the mechanic who changed my tires said that it was a problem with my not rotating the tires on time. He also said that it was because the back end of the car was so light that the back of the car would "bounce up and down" and cause that kind of tread wear. I don´t know if this is the case, or if he´s full of shit.

After driving several hundred miles, at speeds of 30-110mph

I noticed that this problem is at its worst at about 65mph. The problem seems to go away once you get over 85mph, although I think that´s because it starts shaking so fast that you just feel it as a whirr and it just kinda blends in.

As a result, I felt that the problem was in the suspension. I felt that what was happening was that the suspension had leaked oil and become underdampened, so when I hit a bump, that bump propagated and was perpetuated somehow by the fact that my suspension couldn´t stop it.

My sister was in the car with me, and she thinks the problem is that a light car like the escort will shake because it doesn´t have the weight to keep the tires glued to the road, but she doesn´t know anything about cars.

Please help me, i just want a smooth as buttah pimpin´ wagon...

[ This message was edited by: siragan on 23-12-2002 16:06 ]

[ This message was edited by: siragan on 23-12-2002 16:07 ]

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Kenny

· #18 · Dec 24, 2002

maybe one of your rims is dented. did you run over any curbs recently? or you could have a bad tire on there, thats what happened to my moms car and it shakes pretty bad at 60-70 but then smooths out past that.

also, check the CV joints...i never checked mine and for like 3 years my car vibrated and i wondered why, and they finally figured it out at my mechanic and they replaced it. then i could top my car out and it would cruise like i was going 40.

i think the bent frame is a possibility, or bent axle maybe...it could be many things.

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Kenny

· #41 · Dec 27, 2002

save your money, and sell your car...then use that money to buy a GT. buy my GT. i´ll have it running sometime next week.

i might keep it for college tho...because its in really good condition as far as the eyes can tell, it just got that crankshaft problem that messed the whole thing up...but it´ll all be better next week.

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Kenny

· #45 · Dec 27, 2002

<sigh> thats what happens when you abuse your car taking it in snow! escorts deserve better.

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Kenny

· #49 · Dec 28, 2002

well it turns out that my car´s engine is worse off than i thought. what could have happened was when the camshaft stopped spinning, some of the valves were still down and the piston came up and bent them, so i need a valve job. or it could have happened before, since my car was being so slow anyway. it runs, but only on 3 cylinders. i´m selling it to my friend for $100 in addition to the work he did on it already. thats pretty sad considering that ive spent like $4000 in the past year to keep it running.

oh well. there will be scorts in my future. ones with good engines.

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Kenny

· #51 · Dec 29, 2002

hm, i dont think theyre screwing me tho, bc it was my friend´s shop. he also owns an escort and really loves them. he´s fixed my car before, and he did a good job for a cheap price. he installed my intake and he also set my timing a couple times. after it broke down he even came over to my house a couple times and tried to figure out the problem. he brought a new coil and installed a new ECU and distributor and none of those were the problems, and then they found the cam problem. it´s alright, he´s a good guy. he wouldn´t really be screwing me anyway, because he already has an EGT and a Sentra SE-R, and he put in about $200 of work fixing it that he´s not getting paid for if he buys the car.

i think that the car has been running on 3 cylinders for quite some time. it could have happened when my crankshaft was messed up, but my car was pretty slow before that, so i really don´t know when it could have happened, because my car never really had any engine trouble till the crankshaft.

if i go sometime tomorrow to give him the title and other papers, i wonder if he´ll let me drive it. i bet it´s the same speed as it was before the camshaft pin broke. if it is, maybe i´ll still keep it.

Kenny Wazyniak

´91 Escort GT

[ This message was edited by: Kenny on 28-12-2002 23:55 ]

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Kenny

· #54 · Dec 29, 2002

i used to take it to a different guy for many years, but then he started to screw us over and do a crappy job so i started to take it to my friend, especially since he had the same car as me.

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