Recently I had my own experience with death wobble on our '06 2500. I knew it needed new tires, but after some digging on here I figured that at 61k miles it was time to replace the shocks as well.

Since I had some time before the shocks arrived we replaced the tires after having the entire front end looked at by the dealer. I told the tech I wanted everything looked at since the previous dealer didn't catch the failed steering gearbox, and I wanted to make sure everything from the front diff fluid to grease points, and tie rods to the steering gearbox were checked again. Everything came back fine.

I drove it over a section of road I knew would induce DW as this is where I first experienced it, along with another spot I knew would do it also, and the new tires didn't solve the issue. We did notice a huge improvement with the new tires over the worn BFG TA-KO's, so we waited until the new shocks arrived.

After replacing the shocks with Bilstein 5100's (thanks to the information from this forum) I couldn't get the truck to induce DW on the same sections of road no matter how hard I tried.


I just wanted to share this with you all, since it looks like these cheap shocks from Dodge might very well be the source of our problems, and I'll probably have to do the same with my '08 as it's showing the same signs our '06 did before we had the first DW experience in regards to handling normal to medium bumps in the road.



-Kris

 

Anyone?





-Kris

 

I've had MANY experiences with DW on jeeps...but shocks were never the culprit.

That being said...describe what happened when your truck did the death wobble...not saying it didn't happen...but sometimes folks definitions of DW are different.

Mine is: You hit a bump...or even a certain speed...the steering wheel saws back and forth on it's own so violently you cannot hang on and you think the front end is going to fall out of the truck...the ONLY way to stop DW is to bring the vehicle to a complete stop.

Causes (IMO) of DW: bad steering joints (TRE's), loose or maladjusted trackbar or worn track bar joints, incorrect trackbar or steering bar (tie rod or draglink) angles. severely worn ball joints (still iffy as to if this causes it), badly misaligned front end (toe out (have to be pretty far), camber/castor angles not right).

I've never had badly worn tires or bad shocks cause DW. Bad shocks cause odd things to happen when you hit a bump (suspension bounces a lot more than it should) or when you hit the brakes the suspension can/will rebound causing a front to rear rocking motion of the whole rig. Badly worn tires can cause you to follow road imperfections more than good tires. Putting on new tires and/or new shocks...and having DW get better is (again IMO) masking another problem. What caused the tires to wear improperly is more likely the cause of the DW rather than the tires themselves.

Bumpsteer is another issue...you hit a bump and your vehicle decides to go a way other than straight. But it is usually manageable unless you overcorrect...scary indeed if bad enough...but can be controlled until you figure out what caused it.

 

Yeah this was death wobble. The whole truck shakes, the steering wheel moves back and forth, and it felt like the entire front end was going to jump off the truck. The only way it stopped was pulling over and stopping.




-Kris