2014 F350 Vibration
We bought a 2014 F350, my dealer told me I needed to drive my new truck 1,000 miles before I towed with it. Yesterday I hit the mark and today I hooked up the trailer for a test drive. All was great, ...
Forum Discussion
Any truck that has a two piece drive shaft can have launch shutter. My Ram has it towing a heavy load. As your dealer told you when you load your truck near max you change the rear drive shaft angle. This shoves the shaft further into the carrier bearing causing the yoke to drop below center line. Then when starting off from a dead stop the yoke turns off center until it reaches a speed that it snaps back into the center of the CB.
By shimming the CB down a little it takes some not all of this out. The down side is you will pick up some shutter empty. There is nothing you or the manufactures can do to stop this. Ram came out with a one piece shaft for the quad cab LWB trucks but ONLY if they have 4WD. My 2WD is to long and would snap off the tail shaft of the trans if it had a one piece drive shaft.
As far as some saying it won't hurt anything that is dead wrong. Launch shutter will destroy the carrier bearing and u-joints in short order. So if you only tow a few thousand miles a year I would not shim it. If you tow more then have the dealer shim the shaft. The only way to find out how much to shim it is to use an angle finder. Check the angle of the rear shaft unloaded then with the trailer and split the difference. I don't have the formula with me but the dealership should have it. Or can get it through the drive train engineering department at FMC.
Ram came out with a updated HD carrier bearing that is round and does not have the large squire rubber with all the holes in it. In fact you can not even see the rubber as it is completely enclosed in heavy steel. Me if I were to tow again I would add air bags or two overload springs in the rear to my Ram.
Good luck Don
By shimming the CB down a little it takes some not all of this out. The down side is you will pick up some shutter empty. There is nothing you or the manufactures can do to stop this. Ram came out with a one piece shaft for the quad cab LWB trucks but ONLY if they have 4WD. My 2WD is to long and would snap off the tail shaft of the trans if it had a one piece drive shaft.
As far as some saying it won't hurt anything that is dead wrong. Launch shutter will destroy the carrier bearing and u-joints in short order. So if you only tow a few thousand miles a year I would not shim it. If you tow more then have the dealer shim the shaft. The only way to find out how much to shim it is to use an angle finder. Check the angle of the rear shaft unloaded then with the trailer and split the difference. I don't have the formula with me but the dealership should have it. Or can get it through the drive train engineering department at FMC.
Ram came out with a updated HD carrier bearing that is round and does not have the large squire rubber with all the holes in it. In fact you can not even see the rubber as it is completely enclosed in heavy steel. Me if I were to tow again I would add air bags or two overload springs in the rear to my Ram.
Good luck Don
