Am in a campground in Fl. The guy across the street has a 350 Ford dually, 4wheel drive, and positraction. He was complaining that his truck shudders when is pulling his 5th wheel. It shudders when he starts out from a dead stop, but goes away when he gets going. I told him that my CTD Dodge does it too. I was told not to worry about it. Is it normal for these tv's to do this? What causes this and is it something to worry about? What can one do to stop it? I try and take off as slow as possible, but it still does it. Heeeelp

 

the shudder you mention isn't normal for our trucks but some do have launch shudder and lasts through 1st/2nd and early 3rd. The fix on our Dodges is to change the driveline angle with a longer/shorter center bearing support brkt. My '03 had it bad as I described above but after adding Timbrens for too much rear sag the shudder has gone. See TSB 03-003-04 dated 6/15/04 for launch shudder.
JIM

 

I just got done fighting that issue on a new 06 2500. TSB didn't do diddly for it. Every change we made that seemed to help with the trailer showed up with some prob driving empty (vibration/drone). I mentioned right off the bat that air bags would probably be the best route to take, or course being it's a new truck he didn't feel that he should pay, and of course DC isn't going to buy them. We even went so far as to play with some shims on the rear pads to adjust rear pinion angle.

Here's my view.....the guy traded off a 98 2500 for this 06. The 98 had an EZ Edge and he had air bags. I think that even with the hp/torque increase of the ez, he still wasn't putting down the power that the 06 is.....that and anyone who has driven the older trucks with the 47re knows that the torque convertor is much more loose than the 48re. More hp/torque, tighter convertor bringing the power in at a lower rpm. Kind of like watching a big rig take off from a stop and you see it lug/shudder until it gets it's momentum up.

.....even my bosses new truck has this "shudder" after he mounted a rack so he could haul 2 750 Polaris quads over the bed.