2009 ram 1500 unstable
 

When you are drive at 50 or 60 mph going over a dip in the road, truck seems to bounce up and down and side to side. Almost scary. The shocks are new front and rear, made no difference. Under normal driving it seems fine.
Thoughts anyone?

Been happening way before the 2009....sort of like bounces and almost jumps in next lane. Lose total control of truck.

2009 ram 1500 unstable
 

Totally, can't figure it out though. All suspension
Seems fine

Wondering if it has anything to do with the locked diffs.
Maybe tires over inflated.
I know I am not the only one, some of my friends have Rams and complain about the same thing.

Check the rear panhard bar. Mine had a loose nut and wallowed out the hole in the axle bracket, made the rear sway around.

My 09 had these problems at about 36k miles. Not sure what's wrong with yours but mine was in the steering. Dealer changed the rack and pinion assembly. I thought it was the tie rod ends because it felt like they had some play in it. Well it would only happened when you hit a bump while doing 55 plus on the freeway. It would jerk left to right and I would have to get a grip on the steering wheel to control it. Especially when you were in a turn and hit a bump. Seems like it's doing it again after adding another 50k plus more miles on it.

This is known by those that have had that trouble (and it is fairly common) as the "death wobble." If I'm not mistaken, Chrysler has gotten into a bunch of trouble over certain of these trucks doing this.

You can go to the official Ram website and look for "recalls", put in your VIN number and it will tell you if your truck is listed for any recalls.

http://recalls.mopar.com/

"Death Wobble" is a condition that specifically effects SFA trucks regardless of manufacturer and it's been written about since long before I was old enough to drive. Nobody has ever really definitively determined the exact causes.

The OP has an IFS truck, it may be handling like a turd over bumps, but by definition it's not "Death Wobble".

I'm not aware of Chrysler getting into any trouble due to death wobble issues, I'd like to see this. Link please.

I'm inclined to believe a situation similar to oldjeep's is what's going on here. An abnormally worn component is likely the culprit...

The only thing positive about DW is that if it ever happens to you, you will always hold on to the steering wheel just a little tighter no matter if you think it's been fixed or not! :(:(
Jay

Don't know how you missed it my friend, it was all over the mainstream news not long ago. One of the reasons that they are in trouble is because of their not taking care of recalls in a timely manner.

I had this experience myself with the pinion nut recall---It took them nearly a year to fix mine and I had to keep calling and going to the dealer to finally get it taken care of. I would say that a steering problem that could cause a driver to lose control would classify as a "death wobble". Note that this particular problem was only on 4X4's although I have read reports of it happening on two wheel drives, but I can't qualify that.

Link you requested below.

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2015/...y-back-500000/

"Everybody" knows about the recent big recall/buyback issue. However, as far as I can tell it has nothing to do with Death Wobble. The only mention in the linked article regarding suspension is
There is no mention as to what the parts are or what is wrong with them.

Further, the article is not consistent with itself, first stating that the reason for the buyback is that "Some previous repairs have been unsuccessful", and then "Owners also have the option of getting them repaired" and again later "Fiat Chrysler said more than 60 percent of the trucks already have been fixed, and the company is allowed to repair and resell the trucks it buys back."

So, do they know what the problem is, or not? How are they being allowed to "fix and resell" if sometimes the fix doesn't work? Seems more like a whole lot of speculation and an opportunity for over-sensationalizing than anything else.

I see NOTHING about Death Wobble. The reason they (and GM last year) faced heavy fines is because of dragging their feet on recall practices. And the fines were rightly handed out IMO. Not acknowledging a problem exists or initiating a recall and failing to make repair parts available are deplorable business practices.

BUT, you clearly stated Chrysler got in trouble specifically for Death Wobble issues. This is simply not true. The fact you may choose to call it death wobble doesn't make it so. You can choose to call a cheetah a giraffe, doesn't make it one though.

DEATH WOBBLE was a term first used by original civilian Jeep owners and by definition is "a violent and uncontrollable shaking of the entire vehicle caused by extreme oscillation of the FRONT DRIVE AXLE. This IS NOT to be confused with a vibration or "shimmy" of the steering wheel".

In the case of Ram 1500s, they have no front drive axle, so by definition its not death wobble and it's been proven the vibration IS a shimmy of the steering wheel...

Okay, I'm not going to argue that point --it's not worth it to me. I happen to know a couple of people that have had this trouble and hitting a bump at speed sometimes cause the truck to bounce from one side to the other, almost causing loss of control like the article says. If I called it by the wrong name, please accept my apology.

Yes, in retrospect I did unintentionally give that impression, please accept my apology again. However, the steering problem is an important part of the trouble Chrysler found their self in.

Correct, I did state that in my second post.

In the future I'll try my best to be exactly technical and quote any article word for word, please excuse my ignorance. As far as the definition of death wobble, I'll bow to your superior knowledge.

You bring up some good points, but from what I have read from some people that have had a dealer try to correct this problem, at least some of the time it doesn't work or the fix is not permanent. Whether there are cases that it did get permanently fixed, I don't know.

To tell you the truth, at this point I am sorry that I ever got involved in this thread. I posted on this forum for a long time when I owned a 2004 Ram and apparently old age has caught up with me. I've learned a lot over the years from many that post here, and I'll probably be more of a reader in the future, as opposed to a poster.

I really didn't mean to come down so hard on you for using an incorrect term. Because I've worked in the auto industry in a few different capacities over 30 years, I'm on a number of forums. My last job was technically supporting classic restorations. I'm even on Corvette forums because I worked a couple of years supporting Corvette parts/modifications.

I just get really tired of the term Death Wobble used to describe everything from a tire out of balance to a bad shock on forums for every vehicle from a 1957 Chevy to a C7 Corvette.

If you read all truck (and SUV) forums, they are all loaded with "death wobble" threads. It astounds me that no manufacturer can build a truck with all the technology available that doesn't have suspension and driveability issues. I personally think a lot of it is the driver, one who owns or owned a car and expects a truck to handle comparably. Which also leads me to believe another chief cause is that manufacturers are trying to make their heavy trucks handle like cars, which is causing the driver to feel every adverse condition on the road. Not to mention smaller, lighter components while taking a lot of the heaviness truck front ends felt like handling 20 years ago away, these components wear faster and more abnormally causing driveability issues. While not technically death wobble, it's still an unnerving and dangerous situation...

The steering problems were on 2008's they recalled Nothing to do with 4th Gen trucks.

280,600 on my 09 . no such thing ever happen to mine

Hope this is it. My 2010 became just uneven. load or no load. Like it would try and skew if you hit a rough spot on the highway.
So I replaced the shocks and that helped unless you go over any type of hill at highway speed. By hill I mean hump in the road that will make you suspension work. It's like the truck has a worn out front right shock.
Now the other day I had 6 8ft sheets of sheet rock in the back and some 2x4's This made it very noticeable so the rear bar is making sense.