Please Help..just bought '03 Mountaineer

Similar experience with my '03. It shimmies and shakes when I corner. I am 99% certain it is the transfer case that is shot or possibly the differential. It acts like a truck in 4wd on dry pavement. The odd thing is it works fine when you first start it up and drive it for awhile. After 20 minutes or so the wheels hop and chirp in corners. Damn all wheel drive. Shoot have stuck with 4x4 and least I could drive it in 2wd.

Yes i have an 03 also before i bought it i heard the same sounds mine has 98,000.the master ford mechanic had hell to find the problems.Finally ford has a warning about the torque converter,so he replaced it and no more problem with the swishing sound,also one rear bearing was bad .There sealed bearings all the way around.The bearing was 1100 dollars and the torque converter was 1100 dollars.They had to pay for it befor i gave them the money.

It could very well be the park brake. The pads come off of the park brake and rattle around on the housing. I can see where they might get crossways and bind up occasionally. It's pretty easy to check, but not easy to replace them.To check them, pull the rear brake rotors off. the park brake is a shoe type brake. It uses the inside of the rotor as the drum to expand against. If the pads came off of the shoes, you can take the pads out when the rotor is off. However, replacing the shoes requires pulling the axle out to get access to the brake mechanism. We're currently driving without park brake pads. (We never used them anyway.) Here's a link with more info: http://www.fixya.com/cars/t2381705- 2005_mountaineer_rear_emergency_brake OK, I just noticed this question is about a year old. I'll go ahead and post in case anyone else has a similar problem. Could the original poster please let us know what you finally found?

To be honest, if I knew back in 2003 what I know now about my 2003 Mountaineer, I would have never bought it. They have problems. More problems than the recalls may suggest. In fact, my 1983 Ford pickup is in better shape. My cd player stopped working exactly 105,000 miles. Radio works fine. My transmission shifter will jump out of drive ( automatic) and go into neutral on a bumpy or smooth road. The rear end/axel makes loud noises at different speeds. Have had the rear replaced 3 times in 7 years. The braking system needs help, too. I don't use the emergency brake. Never had to. One day while driving, was hearing all of this chatter while driving. Found out that the e. brakes were tangled up and not put together. Had them replaced. Problem with all-wheel is, if one tire is bad, you have to replace all four.

I have an 02 mountaineer that would grab and jerk while making tight turns into parking spots and it also felt like something was binding while backing up and turning. Check the bushings that hold the front differential in place. If they are gone it will allow the differential to move and cause the u-joints to bind.

I have an 03 myself, just got home from picking it up at shop. The guys at the shop told me it was the transfer case. Now $1001.05 later, I'm still stuck with the same grabbing, hopping and humming problems. So they tell me it is the rear end, and the labor on that alone is $410.00. They also proceed to tell me this is a common problem with the AWD Mountaineer. My question is...could they have just replaced the rear end for now, and waited on the transfer case?

Csheen- did replacing the blown out bushings make the issue go away?

05 doing the same stuff,replaced a bad front wheel bearing and all the issues stopped,recently started doing it again and the other front bearing is loose now,the wheel speed sensor is integrated and when the bearing goes bad it makes the system think a wheel is sliping so it locks up the awd and causes the issues

It’s the viscous coupler in the transfer case. About $1,000 repair.

Check viscous clutch in differential. It’s probably locked into AWD. Either bad clutch or erroneous signal to clutch i.e. speed sensor. Your front wheels are scooting.

on 07 mountaineer can you change front differential side bearings with out dropping differential out of car

Transfer case for sure about $1600.00

I never can find a straight answer on this website. I had a small problem the other with my 2002 mecury mountaineer where i turn my keys and the ignition would not start up. All was flashing on my dashboard was theft light. Everyone was saying oh i need to get a new key etc It took my mechanic 3 days to figure out that it was the transceiver gone bad. No one figured that out. Now i am having problems again when i put the suv in reverse it jerks and like it wants to shut off