Howdy all,

After not driving my truck much this winter (the joys of buying a RWD truck a couple years before moving up north) I finally took it on a little road trip and noticed a substantial amount of vibration seemingly coming from the rear end/suspension. It feels like it's from the suspension as it gets worse the faster I'm going and doesn't change when accelerating or decelerating, and when on a super smooth patch of road it dissipates substantially. Additionally I've checked my u-joints (with truck in neutral) and there doesn't seem to be any play, they are old as snot but they don't seem to move more than 1mm or so when rocking the driveshaft back and forth. My differential is leaking a bit from the rear seal (replaced it to no avail, pinion didn't move a hair when I checked while replacing the seal, must be something going bad internally?), but again I think it's something with the rear suspension.

I replaced the leaf spring bushings with the Ruff Stuff bushings recommended here on this forum a couple years back, and my shocks are only a few years old with less than 10k miles on them. Is it possible the bushings are just quite stiff or are these trucks known to have particularly poor ride quality at high speeds when no towing/carrying a payload? I really want to drive this thing more now that it's warming up but the ride quality above ~60 MPH is pretty rough. Last night I crawled under the rear to inspect everything and everything appears in working order, the only thing I noticed is the shocks move a bit when I try to rotate them left or right, maybe a 1/4" or so, but everything is seated properly and bolted up. Any suggestions/recommendations?

 

How is the tire balance? If it sat for quite a while, maybe flat spots on the tires?? Might try rotating the tires, and see if anything changes.

 

You know, I actually have no idea and just realized I completely neglected to get the tires check after it sat... gonna get them looked at this afternoon. If this is the culprit it'll be the cheapest remedy yet on this truck lol

 

So after waiting two hours at the tire shop it appears that both of my rear rims are "severely" bent, to the point where "we don't know how they're even holding air." Supposedly their balancing machine said they'd need 30 oz of weight to be good and they obviously didn't do that. The front ones are apparently okay but it looks like I need to go to a rim shop and see if they can be repaired, otherwise I'm buying "new" ones. Unfortunately I have the chrome 17x8 ones off of a 3rd gen, and while they're numerous on ebay my gut is telling me that the quality of them might be questionable. So much for a cheap fix lol

 

How did they get bent???

Any to be found at local junkyards?

 

I haven't the slightest clue... these wheels were on the truck when I bought it a few years ago and I haven't done anything extreme with the vehicle so it must have been from the previous owner(s).

There are a few trucks at the local junkyards so I was going to go there and check them out after work, but I did find someone on eBay who's selling brand new wheels, albeit at $200 a pop, but it might be nice to not have to deal with this issue again if the ones I find at the junkyard are also banged up.

 

200 bucks is actually fairly cheap for wheels these days......... That might turn out to be a really good deal.

 

Well, the local wheel shop is charging $225/wheel to repair them, I think I'm going to be the (unfortunate) proud owner of a new set of chrome 3rd gen wheels!

 

But your truck will drive nice again.

 

Knowing the previous service history (or lack thereof) and ownership (I found a literal crack pipe and a stash of drugs in a magnetized box in the wheel well) it might be the nicest it's ever driven!

Out of curiosity, I did find some used wheels that were supposedly tested and come with a 6 month warranty for half the price, in your experience would that be worthwhile if I'm looking to save some money or would springing for the brand new ones be best? I just didn't anticipate spending $1000 bucks on wheels of all things, that's gonna set my LSD differential conversion back a bit.