Hi all! I'm new here, so bare with me if this has already been asked (just let me know where). I have a 2005 Ram 1500 2WD Hemi with the Big Horn package and it has 48000 miles on it. I've had it for about 1.5 years and leveled it out last October. No big deal, everything was great until it started shaking really bad in the spring so after my dad and I looked at the brakes we looked at the rotors. We ended up having them turned the beginning of June and now they are even worse. The only thing I know to do is to replace them. My questions are has anyone else had this problem with this few miles? Any suggestions on replacement rotors?

Also, before I leveled it the outside of the front tires were scalloping so I swaped the tires. When I leveled it out about a week or so later I had the tires balanced and an alignment done. The tires are still scalloping. Any help with this is much appreciated!!

Thanks!
Melissa

 

As far as turnign your rotors, the mechanic can only turn the rotors to a certain point before they are to small and can not be used. If your rotors were really bad, then turning them might have only reduced the shake and not eliminating it totally. If the shake only happens when you are breaking, then replace the rotors. You will feel the difference right away with a new set. As far as which one to buy, all I can say is don't skimp. Buy the OEM set or look to upgrade to a performance set that will handle the harder breaking better. And yes the rotors can go bad fairly quickly if you brake hard and if you went from driving a car to this truck, then you will be braking hard for awhile getting used to stopping the higher weight that you are not used to. In short, now that you have been driving your truck for awhile and you are used to everything about the truck, change the rotors.

Now for the tires. Depending on how bad the tires wore on you and what kind of alignment was done are your 2 big concerns. First the alignment. Some of the smaller cheaper places will only do a 2 wheel alighnment and really doesn't do a whole lot for you. The bigger places like a dealership or Tire Kingdom will do a 4 wheel alignment. This is what is needed for the best results. The only real way to tell is how long did it take them to do the alignment. If you had your truck back in under 2 hours, this is not good. A 4 wheel alignment should take 3 -4 hours.
Now if your tires were worn down pretty good before the alignment, again this was a bad thing and a new tire should have been put on. Your truck would not have been sitting the same on all 4 corners and screwing up the computer for the alignment. Without seeing your tires though, I am just throwing out a guess on this one. Find out what kind of alignment you received, and if your tire or tires are worn down pretty low, get new ones and do another alignment.

 

I won't be having these rotors turned again. I understand what you're saying about going from a car to a truck but I was in a truck before. This is my 3rd 1500, but the first with these problems.

As for the alignment, it was a 4 wheel alignment and the tires weren't too bad because you couldn't tell unless you were right on top of them. But you could feel the scalloping when you ran your hands over them. Now you can see, especially when I've driven over dust or gravel. I plan on getting new tires but I wanted to make sure that it's not a front end problem and does the same to new tires.

 

2 more questions then.

1) How often are you driving on dirt and gravel?

2) What kind of tires are you running and what are the tread ratings?

If the tire has a low tread rating of 300 or less, then the offroad driving can kill them pretty fast. I always make sure that my tires have a tread rating of at least 500.

 

The only time I drive in gravel/dirt is when I pull into the driveway in front of my dad's shop and it's only a total of about 15 feet or so. I don't take it off road if that's what you're asking...

My tires are the one's from the factory.

 

ummm...might wanna recheck that....4 wheel alignment is not possible on these trucks....i could be wrong, but i'm 99.9% sure i'm not............

if you swapped the tires when you had the alignment done (or very soon before) and they are still scalloping or getting worse then i'd be lookin at ball joints or tie rod end

 

On a 2wd truck, one of the most common reasons for scallopping is shocks that are not keeping those tires on the road. Do you get any skipping? I recommend Bilsteins. They will make a world of difference in the yrucks handling. OEM shocks are garbage.