2013 MDX shaking at 75+ mph
 

Bought a certified pre-owned 2013MDX Noticed car shakes noticeably in highway at speed of 75+mph....got it checked twice by dealer,their tech says its low quality tire(Acura provided with 4 brand new tires when i purchased it) they want me to buy 4 new tires but they cant assure it will fix problem....car had alignments and wheel balance done a couple of times since i bought it which is about a year and half. what next

One option is to get a tire maintenance deal from discount tire (don't know price but probably $20-25 per wheel). I imagine that Honda has balanced the tires and one tire has an out-of-round leading to vibration. You should come out cheaper than replacing all four tires.

Another possibility is a loose propeller shaft (front to rear drive shaft).center support bearing. Bearing can fail and cause vibration/noise. This seems less likely in to 2013, but possible.

good luck

If the dealer is telling you it is because of low quality tires, they put the tires on it and you bought it certified pre-owned from them, then THEY need to replace the tires at no cost to you. A way to figure out if the tires are really the cause of the problem is for them to put a known good set of wheels/tires from another MDX on yours and test drive it to see if the vibration still exists.

Since it has been a year and a half, I doubt the dealership will do much for you other than make you throw more money at the problem to see if that helps. Depending on how cheap your tires are:

- cross rotate: sometimes cross rotation (left to right OR right/front to left/rear etc...) can smooth out vibrations

- road force balance: they put 1200lbs of pressure on the tires to find the hi/low spots and adjust the tire on the rim to lessen the need for a lot of weights

- shave the tires: there could be hi/low spots road force can't fix because the cheap tire is out of round (oblong shaped). There are places that can shave a tire to get it back into a circular shape

- bite the bullet and purchase a better quality tire. You have a vibration at +75 mph, most likely poor braking/handling/bad weather traction/road noise with the cheap tire anyways. It might improve the MDX in more ways than one with a new set of tires on her. I love Conti DWS 06 and I am on my 2nd set on my 11 MDX (also have them on my RDX and TSX).

Has to be Bad Tires

I think the vibration over 70+ is a common issue on a lot of MDX's, check out google, you will see a bunch of topics on the issue.

Maybe you can have them change the drive shaft under the pre-certified warranty.

I took off a set of Conti DWS 03 due to road noise, replaced with Cooper Tire and there was no change.
Look at that Prop shaft bearing. Its more likely than tires to cause this problem

Have you resolved this problem yet? Was it the shaft bearing?

Had my 2012 Acura MDX diagnosis, it was found that my rear differential is bad. Having replaced as of tomorrow. MDX currently has 175,089 on it.

Ouchy.

How much is it going to cost?

Work is done and my MDX is already back home.

Rear differential, brought slightly used for $155 with 58k on it.

While the differential was out the driveshaft was inspected and identified as the cause of differential failure.

Total set back was $920 for labor, $155 for differential & $100 for driveshaft used with 85k on it.

All work was done by an ASE Certified Acura Technician at the dealership who is a mortgage client of mines.

The grand total of $1200 and my baby has no vibrations :-) :yum:


A suggestion, when it comes to any vibrations with these vehicles, take it to the dealership. Even if you decided to do the work else where, it's worth having a person who specializes in these vehicles take out the guesswork.

It is good to have a client that is also an Acura Tech, otherwise those would have been OEM new parts.

Most Acura Techs want to (someday) open their own shop and seek weekend side jobs, for money and networking.
I've found 3 current techs and 2 former techs via facebook.