Was cruising on one of the back residential streets here, when I saw some dude in a lifted Ferd with some big mudders on it, heading my way. I was about 3 blocks from him, when he went over a section of road that had a big hump in it, due to a manhole @ an intersection.

When he hit that bump (somewhere around 40mph), all of a sudden, his two front tires went berserk, flopping from left to right in parallel. He slammed on the brakes, and rolled to a stop in the middle of the road. As I passed him, I smiled and thought how luck I was to not have that issue in my dodge......

Strange thing was, it was a leaf spring'd Fthree fitty with a 6+ inch lift in it. Didn't think it was as prevalent on the leaf spring trucks, but I guess it's all how you have it set up.....or size of your rubbers, I guess.

Really cool to watch...... not fun to be inside, I'm sure.

Looked just like this.... except he was heading my way...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj9PNNChVm4

 

I saw a guy one time in a f350 trying to drive through death wobble. I was in the lane next to him.and a little behind and he drove a few miles like that. I have been in a truck that did that and I could not imagine just driving along like that.

 

I was in a 2nd gen dodge 24 valve buddies truck and he had not fixed the death wobble and it started doing it on a badly paved road at 60 miles an hour scares the crap outta ya trust me haha

 

Yep did it just once in my truck, scary feeling especially on a hair pin turn on a mountaintop with no guardrail......Went straight to town and bought a new tracbar, never done it again.

 

Now that would be really really really scary lol

 

Ill bet that knocked all the mud off his undercarriage.

Does it do it on a truck with stock suspension, tires and height?

 

The root cause of DW from what I've been able to gather, is caster angle. Things like track bars and TRE's can and will definitely aggrivate the issue though. On my 96, I had junk tre's, shot steering stabilizer and a completly wore out track bar. I could drive at anyt speed over any bump with nary an issue. Added 2'' leveling kit to the front, (which changes the caster angle) death wobble the next day. Replace tre's, track bar, stabilizer, still had DW. Pulled the 2'' spacers, no more DW. Put the spacers back in and compensated with a redneck caster adjustment (''eh, that looks about right'') and had my 2'' lift and a confident suspension. In the case of the ef tree fiddy, maybe the degree shims in the front spring packs to keep the front driveline angle correct were enough to throw the caster far enough out of whack to cause dw...

 

I met a guy who was a service tech for cummins. He told me that the track bar was the main culprit for the coil sprung trucks, and that the bushing going bad causes excessive movement.

Since the truck I witnessed was leaf sprung, and had no track bar, I guess there are other causes as well.

I have a box truck that under certain conditions has a little wobble, but nothing like what I witnessed on the ferd. The truck needs new springs all around, so I guess that could be part of the issue.

Hoping to have them replaced during the slow season this winter when I won't need the truck for work.



T.

 

Fords have had death wobble since the 60's or 70's. The twin I-beam suspension had no adjustment for camber. The fix was to bend the axles.

Got into a wobble with a borrowed camper full of my family going down a steep hill. Owner had spent tons trying to fix it. I put it into the local very good alignment shop and got it fixed for $27. At that time a standard alignment was $21.

Ford never would admit that their suicide suspension even existed.

 

After my last death wobble, when I was towing 6k pounds of dirt, I had to have the upholstery surgically removed....Yikes......Mark