So i'm driving on the highway and in 5th gear, all of a sudden i feel a vibration on the steering wheel and at my feet. And it only happens when i accelerate, not during deceleration or braking. My guess would be the axles, but my friend told me that it's the wheel hubs. I haven't changed anything on the car with the exception of brake pads (since i've only owned the car since april of 2010 and haven't had a problem). The vibration comes in only after the car has picked up speed. Has this happened to someone else or have a clue on what it is ? Helpful feedback please !

 

Only thing to do is lift the front end of the car up and check freeplay in the wheels. Could be a wheel bearing, tie rod, ball joint; hell, it could even be bad tires.

 

Dead thread revival, yes, I know. But just for those who will have the same problem in the future, it was indeed the wheel bearings.

After six months of driving around with bad bearings, a friend of mine and I finally replaced them, and it was a PAIN (mind you we worked in the rain)! We didn't hammer the bearings out like some have done (we did attempt though). We took the entire arm out, although the lower ball joint was the killer part My friend ended up stripping the nut that was on the lower ball joint, so our only alternative was to cut the nut off with a grinder. After about 2 hours and a variety of attempts to remove the lower ball joint, our patience was gone, we simply cut the ball joint bolt in half (which I believe is the easiest way of going about it, and yes we tried using a puller). The removal of the other arm was quicker since we also cut off the other ball joint (NOTE: do not cut off the ball joint bolt if you do not have a replacement ball joint). After both arms were removed, we brought them to the machine shop (NOTE: if you're bringing the parts to the machine shop to get them pressed out, leave the wheel bearing bolts and the rotor bolts (the 4 on the front side) on; it'll save the you trouble of going back and getting them because the shop will need them to press the bearings out). The machine shop also pressed in the lower ball joints for us. Total cost for both bearings and ball joints: $100 (not sure if it was a good deal, nor did I care). Took us about an hour to put the car back together. Total time spent: 8 hours (not including the 3 hour wait for the machine shop)!

The vibration is gone now, but when the car is in motion, it sounds like something is scraping. My friend said it could be the new rotors that need to ge broken in, or is it the axel?

 

That scraping noise is something else. I replaced rotors on my car when needed, and I have never heard of any scraping noise on new rotors that I just installed.

 

Well, scraping for lack of a better word. But it sounds like something is touching something else while the wheels move.

 

Did you check the backing plate behind the rotor? They always seem to migrate towards the rotor by magic during frontend work.

 

Yes I did, and it's not that. The noise seems to be coming from the tranny.

 

It could be the brake pad shims that slipped off and are grinding on the rotor.

For the future, if you jack up under the knuckle, on the inside it will open up a crevice. Loosen the ball joint castle nut until it is only on the threads of the nut so that there is play to break loose the ball joint but at the same time it won't fall. All you gotta do is put a prybar on the inside(when you jack up the knuckle you will see what I'm talking about) in between the knuckle and the ball joint, then let the jack down and at the same time push down on the knuckle with your foot and it will break it loose and the ball joint will be resting on the castle nut. Use a prybar because I have bent box wrenches doing this. It has never failed to work. You can find it on youtube.

 

We tried that method as well, and I didn't work for us. We didn't have the patience to keep jacking up the knuckle since there were rain showers that were against us at that time.

 

lol it takes like five seconds to jack up the knuckle. When I say that I mean put a jack under the bottom of the knuckle and jack it up.

 

Yeah, five seconds with a big boy hydraulic jack; we were using a little tikes hydraulic jack which takes like 5 minutes for the jack to make contact with the knuckle. My big jack was being used by my brother so it was either the little hydraulic jack, or nothing.

 

I use a 50 dollar oreilly auto parts jack. just use your hands to pump it up to the knuckle, then put the bar in after that. Makes it faster.