I've had an odd intermittent problem for quite some time. When the truck is unloaded the rear seems to want to sway back and forth sometimes. Never happens when I have a trailer on and there is nothing transmitted through the steering wheel.


I took a quick look at the swaybar links front and back and they looked fine. Shocks were recently replaced and the problem existed before and after.

 

Have you checked the stabilizer bar, rear track bar, springs and coil?

 

Quick check with the wheels still on the ground and didn't see anything that looked like a problem. I've got to get the frame up on jackstands so that I can see if there is anything going on with the track bar bushings - visually they look fine and centered.

 

Well, I found it. The nut on the lower (drives side) trackbar bolt is barely on the bolt - and seized (seems cross threaded). Normally not a big deal - just replace the bolt, but the bracket hole also seems wallowed out. Guess I'll take it in to the dealer tomorrow and see what they can do with it. Makes me wonder if this happened when the rear axle recall was done since that would be the only reason that bolt would have ever been removed.

 

I knew you would figure it out. I don't think they needed to remove the trackbar to rebuild the axle, but give it a shot. Probably a good frame shop can weld the wallowed out hole and re-drill it and at the same time align the rear wheels to the frame. The dealer is going to want some coin.

 

If that is the required solution, I'll weld it myself Although I'd be more likely to just weld the damn bolt head to the bracket if it comes to that.


I've rebuilt a number of axles and can't imagine doing one with the diff housing in the truck, but who knows maybe they don't actually do them on a bench.

 

With as many of those pumpkin rebuilds they were doing, I bet they did them with the axle on the truck. It seem odds that you had crossthreads, if it was crossthreaded at the factory, it sure lasted a long time before you had symptoms.

 

Unfortunately the dealer can't look at it until next Thursday, so I guess I'll deal with it tonight. FWIW, even if they did the diff rebuilds with the housing in the truck there is no way that they were sliding the carrier past the track bar without removing at least one side of it.

 

I had my terminology wrong, I was thinking the trackbar was a control arm. My brain was picturing a loose control arm causing the problem.

 

It was that bolt in the left of the picture. Wasn't cross threaded, just loose and the threads were hammered from flopping around in the track bar bracket.


Couple issues there, first is that it is a fully threaded bolt - dumb. Which means that rather than a nice flat shoulder being engaged by the track bar bracket it is threads that both cut the bracket and get flattened when the bolt is loose. I swapped in a grade 8 9/16 shoulder bolt for the 14mm grade 10.9 which is a close enough size. For now there is a grade 8 lock washer on both sides (nut and bolt) so that it won't move and I cranked it down as hard as possible. Just got back from a 50 mile run and it was fine.


Long term I need to drill a couple 1/4" plates and plug weld them to the bracket to actually fix the wallowed out holes.