‘04 2.7 vibration at idle

I have a slight vibration that I can feel in the steering wheel when the truck is idling. Only owned the truck for a couple months and it had a pretty noticeable shake at idle when I bought it. In the past month I’ve cleaned the MAF, TB and changed plugs and it’s way better but I still have this vibration I can feel when I rest my hand on the wheel. Doesn’t matter if the AC is on or not. Is that normal? What else can I do or where else should I look?

 

Some possible simple solutions:

Have you ever changed the power steering fluid? Take a turkey baster and suck some out and put it in a glass container. Compare the color to new fluid. If there is a significant difference, change it. Burnt odor and dark color can indicate old fluid. There are threads on here explaining that process.

Also, what's you idle speed? Maybe you engine is just simply idling to slow. Idle should be 650-750 rpm. Are you feeling the vibration in Park or Drive? If it's worse in Drive, might be idling to slow.

You could also have a small defect in the belt and when the RPMs are low, it's more noticeable. You could loosen the tensioner and run the engine for a minute with the belt not turning.

 

Vibrates in park or drive and it’s a high frequency vibration not like the shake it had when I bought it. The vibration isn’t bad and I only feel it in the steering wheel-but I don’t know if it’s normal. At 91K miles, I haven’t changed the power steering fluid and there’s no service record of it being done. Radiator and brakes were flushed recently but never occurred to me to do power steering. Idle speed looks to be ok judging from the tach. Going to replace AC compressor bearing, idler pulley (chasing a noise when the AC is on) and belts anyway since I don’t have a record of them being replaced.

 

Could also be motor mount starting to go.

 

Check your exhaust. Get it to start vibrating and look under your truck to see if the exhaust is moving around. You’d be surprised at how much the exhaust system can shake a vehicle around.