I went in and had my oil changed and was told that the drive shaft balance ring was broken off- This car is not destined for use after August- approximately how much is this going to cost to have repaired. Forearmed is fore warned.
Oops! Aerostar is a rear wheel drive vehicle. That ring has nothing to do with the balance of the driveshaft. Weights are welded to the driveshaft to balance it. What that ring might be is a shield for the rear transmission seal.
Tester
The guy at the Lub place wrote, " drive shaft balance ring( from front yoke)is broken.
A guy at a lube place is not an automotive technician.
Tester
I would not place too much trust in the lube guy. Unless you’re noticing significant vibration, I wouldn’t worry about it, considering the short remaining time you’re going to use the van.
jack your van up from the side, block it up so it can’t fall and crawl under there and take a look and see if you see anything broken at the front of the driveshaft. Anything loose on the shaft would be making a LOT of noise. If this “balance ring” (no such part) is simply GONE that’s because it was never there…
There may be a few cars with what amounts to a harmonic dampener on the nose of the driveshaft, sort of a small flywheel to absorb torsional vibration. If one of those broke or failed in any way, you would KNOW about it…
I had a 88 Ranger (rwd of course)and it had a big ring on the front of the driveshaft. I could not find any way to hold on to this driveshaft to put new U-joints because of this ring,so I sent it out. The new shaft came back with this ring removed and no issue developed from running the truck without this ring.
I get a vibration at around 45 to 60 miles per hour. It lets up when I take my foot off the gas. My stabilizer link is broken on the drivers side and I attributed that vibration to the broken stabilizer.
You probably have a hanger bearing going out.
Your vehicle has two driveshafts. One from the transmission to the hanger bearing, and one from the hanger bearing to the rear differential.
A stabilizer link only comes into play while turning.
Tester
I don’t see any reason you can’t just live with this until August.
It’s a harmonic vibration problem that can develop between the transmission and the rear-end. The long tubular driveshaft has a little “wind-up”, a little “spring” that at certain speeds can start loading and unloading all the rotating parts…It can become destructive…Adding mass to the shaft dampens it out before it gets back into the fragile transmission…
On a top-heavy van, I would sure fix the broken sway-bar mount…They handle bad enough as it is…