so im getting a really bad "death wobble" on my pickup (SAS, hi-steer).

it just started today. noticed a slight shimmy, then after about 20 miles of driving it was getting noticably worse to the point where i dont plan on driving it as is. it will be fine untill i hit a sizeable bump, then it starts and wont stop untill i get it slowed down to about 20 mph. really violent. really bad.

fist thought was steering stabilizer, so i pulled that, and its fine. my steering stablizer is mounted to the pass side frame rail and the draglink. i plan on relocating it to the axle/ tie rod, but it did not do this before in its current position.

havent put a wrench on everything in the front end yet, but it appears tight.

any ideas?

Check spring eye and shackle bushings for wear. Only real way to test is to take the weight off the wheels and then check. Then check knuckle bearing pre-load. Finally caster angle, that was the cause of the wobble on my '85. It was caused by a 2.5" drop front hanger with 2" longer shackles. Corrected by adding 1.5" to the shackle length (that in turn added ~1.5" degrees to the caster angle) and the DW was gone.

try balancing your tires, just a thought.....

Jack up the front of the passenger side of the truck. Grab the passenger side tire and rock it back and forth and watch the idler arm assy on that side. When the idler begins to wear, there will be excessive play in the steering which leads to the shimmy. I am assuming your truck has one, if not forget this post. My 1991 had this problem and the idler was the smoking gun. I purchased an aftermarket idler for about a hundred bucks. Good luck.

my truck has no idler arm (hi-steer).

this is way worse than anything that could be caused by tires being out of balance. ive run unbalanced tires before, and its not nearly this bad.

also should have mentioned ive probably only got about 1000 miles on the SAS. meaning everything is new. wheel bearings are new and adjusted properly. tie rod ends are new. spring eye bushings are new.

i aligned my truck last week, and my caster angle is actually a bit higher than spec. seeing as low caster would cause a wobble, i dont think thats the problem. also my caster has not been changed. actually nothing has been changed, this happened all of a sudden....

I bet one of Tyler's crappy welds broke <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/scared.gif" alt="" />

*runs/hides*

haha no.

im just an idiot. i had said that everything in the front end appeared tight. well, yeah. but it all was pretty much finger tight. all fixed. thanks anyways guys <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/rolleyes.gif" alt="" />