Choppy Ride

[91waggin]

So over the past year or so, the wagon's ride has been getting harder and choppier, like it's running on a really awful road all the time. bam-bam-bam.
So I finally got around to replacing all the shock absorbers with kyb gr2 police spec shocks. However, while I can feel the shocks doing their work, and the car is somewhat flatter through corners than it was with regular (and one blown) shocks, I still get this really choppy ride--feels like I'm riding in a massage chair going down the road. The car handles fine, and I just had the tires balanced about 6 weeks ago. Any ideas?

is this a classic symptom of needing new coils? I have no idea whether the coils on this vehicle have ever been replaced. I thought old coils would be too soft and start to sag, rather than the opposite.

[mrltd]

There are so many things that all add up. Due to the age, most (and usually all) of the bushings are shot. It could and probably does need springs, but generally that just makes for a mushy ride

[91waggin]

I get the feeling of an almost constant vibration as I'm going down the road above 35 or so. I can hear my tools rattling in the back pretty much constantly. Would shot bushings cause this kind of behavior? And which bushings specifically?

[Glen]

With that much vibration, I would get under it and try to move anything you can get hold of. Get somebody to jump up and down on it so you can see if anything is loose. It sounds like something is about to break.

[marquisman]

check your trany mount, mine is shot on the merc and gives the car a shitty vibration too

[mrltd]

that sounds like a driveshaft or wheel issue.

[turbo2256b]

Frame rusted around trany cossmember, torq boxes, sometimes splits at the top of the frame were it cant be seen.

[79lincolnlover]

bad wheel-bearings??

[P72Ford]

How are the tires? Have the wheels been balanced?

[91waggin]

check your trany mount, mine is shot on the merc and gives the car a shitty vibration too

Sounds possible. Is this mostly at freeway speeds? that's where mine has

[91waggin]

Frame rusted around trany cossmember, torq boxes, sometimes splits at the top of the frame were it cant be seen.

There's no rust on this thing--it's been a garage queen its whole life, and so far as I can tell, there's no rust anywhere.

bad wheel-bearings??

just did them

How are the tires? Have the wheels been balanced?

About two months ago.

[murphmobile2]

The only thing that really comes to mind is a bad belt in one of the tires. But you would imagine the shop that balanced the wheels would notice this.

Unless of course it started to happen at some point after getting them balanced...

[mrltd]

Even with no visible rust, if the A/C was used the frame is probably rotted bad.. It's a common bad spot on these cars.

I'd check everything mentioned.

[LTDMan83]

Even with no visible rust, if the A/C was used the frame is probably rotted bad.. It's a common bad spot on these cars.

That's mainly a northern Box problem. I've yet to see even one here that was rusted completely out, and I always check the ones I find at the junk yards as well. All of the boxes I have owned personally have not been rusty at all inside of the Bulkheads, or around the tranny crossmember, the A/C was used quite abit in the past as well.

[gadget73]

AC rot is a problem everywhere, the more south you get the worse it gets. Hotter climate generally leads to more AC usage. The worse victim of that rot I've ever seen was from Virginia. Another Virginia car I know of rotted so bad the frame broke in half when the car slid into a ditch.