I've made a few posts and read/searched many here at DodgeForum. Learned a lot and have been able to fix a lot because of the forum, very grateful.

I have a 1994 Dodge Ram 5.9L 4x4 1500 Single Cab.
3" Rancho suspension lift, 3" body lift with 36" x 14.5" Mickey Thompson tires
It has Rancho shocks, as well as a Rancho steering stabilizer.

When I say death wobble, I mean I'm driving down the road and my truck will shake, really shake. Shake so much it feels like the truck is falling apart. I have to quickly slow down and stop on the side of the road. Then I continue driving and all is good until it happens again. This is not my daily driver. Just use it for Home Depot runs on the weekend.

I've replaced quite a few things already in an effort to resolve my death wobble problems. Some of these aren't directly related to be trying to resolve death wobble (tire almost wobbled off itself due to bad hub assembly, so I replace quite a few parts when I did that job)

• Wheel hub assembly (driver and passenger)
• Outer axle shaft (driver and passenger)
• Upper and lower ball joints (driver and passenger)
• U joints in the front axle shafts
• Sway bar bushings
• Steering gear box stabilizer bar
• Adjustable track bar (Gen 2 to Gen 3 upgrade)

And today I dropped the truck off to get an alignment. Shop got it all hooked up and said it didn't need an alignment. I guess I somehow kept everything aligned when I was installing all of the above. Blows my mind that it didn't need an alignment.

Outside of the parts mentioned above, is there anything else I could try replacing to help with the death wobble?
Would sway bar end links help? Pretty sure mine are very old.

Thanks in advance for the help,
K

 

The 4 main causes of death wobble areControl Arm bushingsTie RodsTrack BarTrack Bar bracket which in your case I believe it's the cause

 

Ok thanks. My track bar is brand new, as is my track bar bracket. The Gen 2 to Gen 3 conversion kit came with bracket.

So for the tie rods, you think I should do a kit like this?
https://www.1aauto.com/1994-97-dodge...t/i/1asfk03176

Control arm bushings, looks like there are upper and lower of these on both the passenger and driver sides. Fairly sure that new control arms were installed with the Rancho lift (does that sound right?). If so, I'm not sure they need to be replaced. Probably only about 10-15K of wear on them.

 

Doesn't matter how new the bracket is, the bolt in brackets move which turns into death wobble went through the same thing on my truck.

Have somebody turn the wheel while you watch the bracket. ANY movement is bad.

 

Ok, 2 main things:

1) you've got an aftermarket lift so you're likely lacking caster. I don't care if the kit allegedly corrects for this, it's likely not enough. You need to roll the whole axle back a couple degrees and see what happens

2) did the alignment shop give you a printout? These days 99.9% of "alignments" are toe 'n go. Since you have a solid axle (Praise the Lord!!) toe is 100% unaffected by a lift....Basically take a closet rod and lower it or raise it, it's still the same length 🙃

It really doesn't matter if your caster was "within spec"...you want it at the bleeding edge of maximum acceptable, esp w your 36" meats and presumably reduced wheel backspacing if you're running aftermarket wheels

Caster is only really excessive if a)return to center suffers noticeably (think a "chopper" flopping the handlebars side to side) or b) you bind front u-joints at full droop

 

I would look at the tie rod ends(all) and the drag link. Lift one tire off the ground then turn the steering shaft by hand and look for slop.You can swap sides but you probably will see where the slop is. Also look at the steering box.

 

Awesome, thanks guys. Will take a look at all these things and let you know how it goes.

 

Did the track bar mount on the frame side get lowered with the lift/new track bar ? Basically you want the track bar at about the same angle as with the stock suspension. If the track bar is too "steep" it moves the whole axle sideways as the suspension cycles which doesn't help.

Agree with the caster comments above. Note that ultimately you want to achieve proper "trail" which is the distance between the line that the knuckle rotates around and the tire contact patch. Lifting a vehicle with a four link solid front axle reduces the caster angle, *but* larger tires increase the trail which is ultimately what affects steering and return force. Another variable is toe-in. With a modified vehicle the factory specs are out of the window, you might want to try very little toe-in, just enough so the truck doesn't require constant steering input. For reference I used to own a TJ with the original nth degree lift and the kit had very specific alignment instructions: Caster around 3.5-4 deg with 35s (down from 7 deg stock) and toe 0 to 1/16" (most Jeeps run 1/8th).

Unfortunately there is no hard&fast rule, you have to experiment a bit.