Death wobble or ?????

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bigndn

bigndn

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Eagle, ID
When I picked up my 1984 FJ60 in SLC from freightdog and drove it back to North Idaho, I didn't experience anything like the famous death wobble. I've got 33X12.50X15 Goodyear MTRs on it that are in pretty good shape. Once I got here and had the tires balanced and rotated, I now have a weird vibration from about 35 mph to 40 mph, but can drive through it. I had the balance checked again and they didn't find anything, in fact they said the tires balanced very well. The vibration is not terrible, but the steering wheel definately has a small arc vibration that gets fairly bad. This vibration doesn't happen every time I accelerate through the 35-40 mph zone, but seems to be worse on some roads than others.

After reading about the famed death wobble, I realized that is what happened in my Dodge. It always happened on the highway at 60-80 mph and was brought on by a bump (i.e. going over a bridge or something similar) The culprit was the steering stabilizer.

I did search the forum and read about death wobble, but this didn't seem to be quite the same as what I read about. Any idea what could be causing this? I couldn't find any play in any of the steering components, either. Thanks for your help. :cheers:
 
Death wobble usually has to do with loose steering components, or a bad angle of the axle after a big lift. It would be independent of the tires.
Since you experience this after rotating the tires, my best guess would be badly balanced tires, despite the claim of the shop. Maybe have them re-balanced by a better shop, and see what happens.
 
Jan-78FJ40 said:
Death wobble usually has to do with loose steering components, or a bad angle of the axle after a big lift. It would be independent of the tires.
Since you experience this after rotating the tires, my best guess would be badly balanced tires, despite the claim of the shop. Maybe have them re-balanced by a better shop, and see what happens.
Click to expand...

The 60 has a 3.5" OME lift and 1" body lift, so I wouldn't say that's excessive by any stretch. The tires are at 30 psi. The big name tire stores here are Perfection Tire (I will NOT do any business with them again) and Les Schwabs. The shop that rotated and balanced the tires is a small business with two of the best tire guys in the business anywhere around here. I wouldn't be stretching it to say that it is the best tire shop around my area. What do you think? Take it to Schwabs and re-balance them?
 
bigndn said:
The 60 has a 3.5" OME lift and 1" body lift, so I wouldn't say that's excessive by any stretch. The tires are at 30 psi. The big name tire stores here are Perfection Tire (I will NOT do any business with them again) and Les Schwabs. The shop that rotated and balanced the tires is a small business with two of the best tire guys in the business anywhere around here. I wouldn't be stretching it to say that it is the best tire shop around my area. What do you think? Take it to Schwabs and re-balance them?
Click to expand...


It's a hard call. Usually the small shopw do great work. But if the vibration was not there before the tire balancing and rotation, I think it must be the tires. Maybe try having it balanced by a cheap big store to see if there is any difference...

jan
 
Try to find a tire shop that has the Hunter Centramatic wheel balancer machine. It's next-generation from what most tire stores use(25+ yr old tech)...IF balance is the issue. Good luck.
 
Some tires can be out of round, but still able to be balanced. If they are out of round, I have seen a process that trues them. They basically get them spinning and the lower them onto a shaver, kinda like a lathe until the high spots are gone.

I would think that Goodyears would be good, it always seems that its the Swampers and Buckshots that arent molded as well.

Hodag
 
Pluton, thanks......I'll check into that.

hodag.......if the tire was out of round, it makes sense to me that the faster you went the worse the vibration would get, even if balanced. Am I thinking wrong?
 
i am havin the same problem as you r bigndn. 30-35 is bad and the shake gets so bad i have to drop below 25 or accel to 40 before it completely goes away. I stick my head out the window when drivin and the tire is wobblin` side to side real bad. It could be the tire but i was doubting it. Mine are ballanced and properly inflated. I thought my knuckles were goin bad. Im gonna check my u-bolts, steering and knuckles this weekend. It didnt feel like the death wobble to me either. My friend with a jeep had it once and it wasnt the same. Help would be nice, im glad this post went up. O yea. 4" shackle reversal lift kit w/ 33x12.5 mud terrains. they didnt use to be a problem...
 
I've had the same thing at the same speed. I'm pretty confident that it is due to my front end being WAY out of alignment... I'll try to have that done this week and post up.

Chris
 
Steering stabilizers don't create problems, they mearly mask them. Any truck with good steering geometry and hardware should be able to run fine with no stabilizer.

As for the wobble..... Out of round tires could deifnitely set the system into oscillation. If the geometry of the system is good, the system is stable and the oscillation should decrease and stop. If the caster or toe in is way out, the thing can be unstable and the oscillation increases - death wobble. A buddy of mine just did a high steer on his '85 4Runner. The death wobble was amazing. It felt like the front axle really wanted to be separate from the truck. He had some nasty worn out bias ply swampers on it. It was easy to blame the tires. I suggested we at least check the toe with a tape measure. It was WAY over toed. We adjusted as best we could with the crude tools at hand. It made the wobble disappear. I'd definitely rec' an alignment on your truck. I always ask the shop for the before and after numbers. Most alignment equipment should be able to provide a printout. My current Ironman suspension as well as my former OME truck both required caster shims to get the caster in spec. Many people rec' going beyond the +1 degree spec to +3 or so if you're running oversize tires.

Good luck.
 
Thanks for the info, fellas! As luck would have it, I have a freebee alignment coming from the same shop that balanced the wheels! Won it on a silent auction for my daughters school for $11! YIPPEE!! I'll post up when I get it done and any results from it. If anyone else gets aligned soon, post up the numbers......that'd be interesting.
 
firestone sells a lifetime allignment for like 120. they said i could bring it in everyday if i wanted. i even said i take it offroad they said it didnt matter
 
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