Hey all. I recently upgraded the steering in my pickup to the 08+ steering linkage and pitman arm. I also installed a Custom Diesel steering stabilizer.

My truck would death wobble at highway speeds and since the upgrade everything feels more solid.

The issue is, it drives like a perfectly well behaved 4 wheel drive when the road is perfectly smooth and flat. (not many roads like that in Idaho) when it hits bumps it acts like it wants to death wobble then it starts to vibrate in the front end.

It's not transmitted through the steering wheel you can just feel it vibrating. Its been aligned and the tires have been balanced twice and no improvement.

I have 110,000 miles on the stock ball joints, but the tires are wearing fine and it doesn't seem to have a lot of movement.

Could this be caused by the ball joints? Any other ideas on what to check?

Thanks for the help.

 

Look at everything. Get a buddy or someone to move the steering wheel while you lay under and stare at everything as it moves. (Be safe) My 04 drove perfect, however I knew the upper ball joints needed to be replaced. When i finally got to replacing them, as soon as the weight was lifted off and the bolts were loosened, they fell apart. When I picked them up and stuck them back together by hand, each one had to have 1/4" of play, but as I said, the truck drove fine and never showed any tire wear. I also replace other parts with slack and if I added up the little bit of slack in each part, I was close to an inch of slack that the tires had freedom to move about in. I really don't know how it drove so smooth. I can only imagine if someone has death wobble, how much slack would be in all their parts combined. I also think that when death wobble happens, people look to one part to replace as a cure and it's not, it's a combination of worn parts and possibly tires and all the way up the steering column

 

Just had $1500 worth of front end work done, tires wore fine, no indication there, but as you have noticed I felt more issues through the feeling of the truck rather than the steering wheel. Turned out tie rod ends were about to fall out, Ball joints fell out when they began unbolting everything, and a bad wheel bearing. Have it checked out, my buddy who worked on mine told me he didnt know how my tie rod ends didnt come loose, they were that close to coming apart, so dont put it off if youre worried about it.

 

"my buddy who worked on mine told me he didnt know how my tie rod ends didnt come loose"

That's exactly how my upper BJ's were. And I had just pulled my 8500# RV on a 3 hour's one way trip the weekend before. The ONLY thing that has not been replaced on my front end now is 1 sway bar end link.

 

That's what worries me. I replaced the entire linkage in preparation to go to Yellowstone for several days with our 5,500 lb RV. Thankfully nothing went wrong and we made it there and back ok. When it gets back from the diesel shop(bad injector). It sounds like its going to be parked for a while until I can at least get the cash for the ball joints and the u-joints.

I'll tell you, when it turned over 100,000 it seems like everything is going wrong at once.

Thanks for the input, I really appreciate it.