"Death Wobble" updated, fixed
I've heard about it but never experienced it until recently. We have a 2017 F250 4wd at work with around 26,000 miles on it, gas engine. At any speed above about 45MPH the steering wheel will star...
Forum Discussion
Me Again wrote:
Shortly after buying our new 2001.5 RAM in June of 2001, I cracked in more caster myself. Sold it 14 years later and 100K+ miles. I installed a 3rd gen track bar early on, and put on a steering box brace. Everything else was original and I never had a DW event. The drivers side OEM track bar end was an issue on 2nd gen RAMs. Chris
Knocking on wood, I'm at 175k on our 3rd Gen, on all original steering components, even the purportedly maligned "Y steering" linkage. I have replaced shocks and steering stabilizer (about 140k miles ago) and added a steering box brace (100k miles ago) and she drives straight as an arrow, doesn't eat up tires at all, doesn't wander and not a hint of the dw. I keep thinking it might be time to rebuild the front end and then realize it's not and I'm lucky! lol
I do have toe set a about dead 0 and caster in the high 4s.
There are 3 different root causes of dw that I see. 1 is worn/broken components/tires. 2 is bad steering geometry, either through mis adjustment or lift kits etc. 3 is very few alignment "techs" actually understand steering geometry and know how to adjust anything other than what the machine tells them to.
