I just bought a code reader. I should have bought one years ago anyway. The CEL doesn't flash at all. There are two codes in the system. P1450 and P2019.
P1450 is an EVAP code. From my brief research it is caused either by a bad fuel tank pressure sensor or a bad purge solenoid. I don't imagine either way that this would be causing the vibrations. I don't see how it could. Maybe I'm wrong though.
P2019 is coming back as "intake manifold position sensor or switch circuit bank 2". I again did very brief research and what I have found is that this could be caused by a bad sensor (not sure yet which sensor exactly or where it's located) or the entire intake manifold itself could be damaged and need to be replaced. Why in the world they would make an intake manifold for a truck out of plastic, I don't know. What is even harder to understand is how Ford is charging $700 for factory new ones. That's 70% of the cost for a whole new set of heads, complete with valves, camshafts and hardware, for a bunch of plastic pipes. Anyhow, gripes about Ford aside, I think I read that this fault could starve the engine of oxygen and cause power loss at higher RPM, or cause the engine to not want to go into the higher RPM range. I might be experiencing that, but I'm not sure. Even if that is happening though, it definitely doesn't coincide with the timing of the vibrations. I don't know if this could still be causing vibrations some other way though. Could this cause misfiring? Would misfiring cause the vibrations I'm feeling?
I did the test shifting from drive to reverse and back again several times on a level surface and didn't experience any clunking. Once in a while, if I'm on an uphill incline, even a slight one, shifting from park to reverse might cause a slight clunk but it doesn't seem serious and doesn't always happen. It's only occasional.
I haven't had a chance to get under the truck and check the universal joint yet. Bad weather and busy schedule. I will climb under there the first chance I get though and see what I can see.
I don't really take the truck for complete tune-ups ever. I try to make sure the oil gets changed every 3k miles, but I admit sometimes I'm not very timely with it. I do brake pads when they need it. I pretty much just do regular maintenance things when the need arises. I did just take it in for a professional oil change this week though and they also put in a new air filter and topped off the coolant. It has brand new tires, new outer tie rods, fresh alignment, new brake pads and rotors all around, front calipers are new, and the rear parking brake on both sides is newly repaired.
Some other suggestions I have gotten:
-Put the truck into neutral and run the engine at 2-3k RPM. If it doesn't reproduce the vibrations, it's probably not a problem with the engine. I tried this and it didn't produce the vibrations I've been feeling. It seemed hard to keep the engine steady at a certain RPM. I tried like hell to keep my foot steady and hold the gas pedal at a fixed position but I could only hold it at 2k RPM for a short time before it would either climb quickly to 3k or drop quickly to 1k. Maybe it's just me not being able to keep the gas steady, or maybe the engine isn't able to stay at a certain RPM? I don't know though and I'm not sure what that might indicate if it's the engine and not just me. If it's just me then it would seem the engine isn't the problem?
-A bad differential. I have never dealt with differentials before. I generally know what it does and that it involves different gears but I don't know enough to know how to check to see if one is bad.
-Rear axles or drive shaft. My wife got hit in a rear end collision recently, which I know can cause damage to the drive shaft or axles. However, after the accident I had a Ford dealership I really trust look the truck over for any damage that wasn't just body damage. They did their standard multi-point inspection and said everything checked out. After that I had the brakes all done, including the parking brakes because apparently there was a problem with the parking brakes that damaged the ABS sensor and gave a bunch of warning lights on the dash. I guess part of repairing the parking brakes involved removing the rear axles and taking the rear differential apart. I would like to trust that if there was a problem with either it would have been noticed and I would have been notified, and I would like to trust that they put everything back together properly. But, they seem to have some dishonest business practices, and they also screwed up installing brake pads on one of my brakes and it was causing the wheel and lug nuts to get extremely hot. Took a while to figure that problem out. So, maybe they screwed up on the diff or axles as well?
I don't know what you think of any of those possibilities, if they could cause the vibration I'm feeling or the slight fluctuation in RPM when the vibrations happen? I could very easily be wrong but it doesn't seem to be an engine issue or a transmission issue.
Friday, October 20th, 2023 AT 1:04 PM
