Ford Focus - creaking noise

burkey05

Help!!

I bought a 03 Ford Focus 1.4 Zetec last December.
In August a vibrating in the steering wheel became very obvious when i reached speeds of 80kph and over.
I got my balancing and tracking done but that didn't work. Brought it for an interim service and I was told that I would have to get the brake disc's replaced (at 18,000 miles) as they were warped (was told it might be my 16" alloys).
The Ford mechanic agreed that it was unusual for a low mileage car to have to get brake discs replaced so soon.
After the replacement and driving the car for a couple of weeks I noticed a creaking when lightly breaking. Brought it back to the mechanic and he couldn't work out what it was so replaced the pads again to see if that changed anything. The creaking has reappeared and it has been suggested again that it might be the 16" wheels.
The Ford website advertise 14 - 17" wheels for the Focus so don't understand how these 16" can be a problem.
Replacing the 16" for 14 or 15" on the front for test purposes to see if that makes any difference......

Any advice or info. from anyone????!!!

Moanin

I had a similar problem with my car a couple of months ago.Like you I got the wheels balanced and tracked, but what was actually wrong was one of my front alloys was warped and the disk was warped also.So I had to get the wheel straightened and a new set of discs (granted there was 60k on them).I know you think its strange to have a new set of discs after 18k miles, but you dont know was what kind of driving the previous owner of the car did?If the driver hit a bad pothole (Similar to me) it would throw the whole lot out.My advice is to get somebody to look at your wheel .You could do it yourself by jacking up the car and spinning the wheel.I'd doubt its the disc if you had only replaced them.If you dont get it sorted soon it will start to wear yout tyre.

Dilbert75

Swap the front wheels to the back and vice versa, keeping the lefts left, etc. See if its still there.

Rudolph Claus

The focus had a design problem when it first came out with its brwakes needeing extremely low mileage replacement. Google it,,,, i read loads of your type stories on some ford forums.

Them issues were ironed out though, so it prob is your wheel. Worth reading though.

jayok

A long shot - but did you get the 16" wheels check for their symmtery (sp?) / shape? i.e. are the wheels perfectly round?

I had this problem a few years ago with some alloys I fit to a car and at 50mph the steering rack would shake and braking was uneven. Fortunately I was able to diagnose the problem as I still had the original (manufactuer) wheels. Once I fit them back the problem went away. After much checking it was found that one of the alloys wasn't "perfectly" round. As such the tire had an uneven circumference and was causing shaking in the car.

Note, there is is proper terms for symmetery / circumerence / shape, I just cannot remember them. Hopefully it should give you some idea though of what I'm on about. Anyone here care to post the correct terms?

Cyrus

wheels could well be buckled

however a creaking noise surely points to the suspension?