In September I bought a 2001 F-150 4.6L XLT EXCab from a dealer with around 97,000 miles. The truck was fantastic, smooth, quite ride etc. Now at about 103,000 I'm noticing a couple things. At about 100,000 I brought the truck back to the dealer for a free oil change and complimentary 3,000 mile checkup, they decided to rotate the tires, even though I told them not to. All the rest of the truck checked out as excellent. As soon as I put it on the highway the steering wheel started shaking quite a bit, oh well, balance issue in the wheels now, so I brought it to a tire shop and had it balanced. No big deal. A couple days later back out on the highway I noticed vibration in the front end, through the steering wheel, floor, everywhere. Couple weeks later and I lost a nut that holds the sway bar on the driver side, now it clunks around, again no big deal, I've lost those before and replaced them in previous vehicles. The thing I'm worried about is, where the vibration is coming from, if the nut worked itself loose because of the vibration, and what is going to come off next.

A couple things,
The truck sits on aftermarket wheels and tires
The tire pressure is fine
There does not seem to be abnormal wear on the tires

Can someone help me out!?

 

At 100,000 miles the front end should be shot if nothing has ever been replaced. The ball joints, tie rod ends and idler arm are all high wear items on our trucks.

 

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Had same issue with my Expd. Ended up being upper ball joints/ Control arms, and shocks. Replaced upper ball joint/ Control arms, and added Bilstein shocks. Drives like new. Upper ball joint/ control arm comes as a complete unit. However the new ones do have replaceable ball joints however.

 

Does the truck have a leveling kit? (Aftermarket torsion keys)

 

supposedly the front end was redone before I bought the truck. I'm going to try to get a service history from the dealer. And a couple people I've showed the truck to say it looks like its been redone. I was thinking about re-rotating the tires since I didn't have any of these problems till after they were rotated.

 

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Did the road force balance? If not it could be a out of round condition.

 

I was told that the wheel itself was out of balance, by about an ounce? If theres one thing I don't know about cars its tire issues. If that answers that question. They think I just didn't notice the balance issue when the wheel was on the back of the truck.

I'm just worried about the vibration, part of me thinks I should just re-rotate the tires myself and see if that helps, but if it does I'll still have a problem somewhere. Do you think it could be a tire issue?

 

If you know some one with a similar model, you could swap wheels/ tires and see if it goes away. If it does try another tire shop. Most Discount tire shops do road force balancing, which would give a better idea what is going on. You could also do a search for GSP 9700, go to manufacturer site, and find local vendors using the balancer.

 

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I had the same issue recently on a 98 xcab. I bought everything I needed in one purchase here, http://stores.ebay.com/thetireclub.
We just put it on two week ago. The parts look to be of very good quality. The sellers rating is very good.
Tha price was great.

 

Just got done replacing the stabilizer bar linkage, and man, what a difference! Its like having a new truck again! Still has a little bit of vibration, so I'm assuming its from the tires. Its much less sloppy around corners, doesn't make any noise over bumps anymore! The only problem I had was on the side that didn't break the linkage would not slide off so I had to sawsall it at the same spot the other one broke and it was good to go!