We report absolute differential cross sections for elastic electron scattering from SiF 4. The incident electron energy range is 1.5200 eV, while the scattered electron angular range was from 15° to 150°. The absolute scale of the differential cross sections was set using the relative flow technique with helium as the reference species. Corresponding integral elastic and momentum transfer data have been derived from our differential measurements. As a part of this study, independent atom model calculations were also performed. Those computations were found to be in generally quite good accord with the experimental results at both the differential and integral levels. In addition, excitation function measurements at a scattering angle of 60° and in the energy range 114 eV for the 3 (d-stretch) and 4 (d-deformation) fundamental vibrational modes are reported. Finally, differential cross sections for all four fundamental modes ( 1, 2, 3, 4) at the single electron energy of 7 eV are given. These vibrational excitation measurements, when coupled with the elastic angular distributions in the 58 eV energy range, demonstrate the presence of a t 2-symmetry shape resonance. © 2012 IOP Publishing Ltd. ; Support of the Japanese Ministry of Education, Sport, Culture and Technology and the Australian Research Council through its Centres of Excellence program. This work also forms part of the EU/ESF COST Action MP1002 ‘Nanoscale Insights into Ion Beam Cancer Therapy (Nano-IBCT)’. PL-V, GG and FB acknowledge partial financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovac´ıon (Project FIS2009–10245) and the Portuguese–Spanish joint collaboration through the bilateral project HP2006–0042.