I have had plenty of axled street cars, only one the opel wagon use to give me the shakes if you hit the right series of ruts, 7degrees caster just like the rest of my cars everything new ended up putting a steering damper on it, solved the problem but I never knew why it did it and none of my other cars did. mine was a side to side shake not an up and down mine was a dual spring car if you have a transverse spring maybe a panhard bar would help. and I agree if that axle is level that camber looks bad
when it shakes, its side to side, looks like the wheels are jello, shakes your teeth loose untill you slow to a stop, then go...
does this that bad when you go over a bad place in the road, or bumps http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj9PNNChVm4
i had the same problem, and a steering damper fixed it....i used one of the ones socal sells. i don't no what caused the problem, but i have been driveing the car for a few years now with the damper and no more death wobble
an awful lot of vehicles come from the factory with them. I do agree about the band aid effect, but I could never find the reason that one car would have the shimmys and none of the others did, Chevy even put them on monte carlos to cure the shakes
I personally would not want a steering damper on my fenderless coupe, I was just telling of my experience you might try taking some caster out go to 3 or 4 degrees worth a try
when i had the cowl steering it did the same thing, went with a better box, on this setup still does it.
started out with around 4 or 5, then made it 7, it seem to me it wasnt as bad at the 4 or 5 as to its is now at 7...
I had (have) the same problem on my roadster and it is best(least shimmy) when the toe in is as close to zero as I can get it. Another thing is the cross steering rod, what is the diameter? You may need to put a sleeve over it to make it stiffer. Rex
You might need a front panhard bar if your doing the wobble. It will keep the axle centered for you and wont dance around.
Just for grins, how about changing out the front wheels and tires with your buddy and see if it still does it. A few years back I bought a brand new set of aftermarket wheels and put on my straight axle front end... Death wobble out the a$$. I figured that the front was worn so I changed out everything, kingpins, tie rod ends, checked caster, camber, toe in, nothing helped. I took those wheels off, and the wobble went away. It had to be the wheels???
12 degrees caster, balance tires on 2 machines (to check machines), 1/8" toeout, check rims for runout, suspension parts good - will not wobble
None of the above! The problem is definitely, bad muffler bearings. I'm sure of this too, because I had the exact same thing happen to me on my 'Ed Roth & Tommy Ivo- built', '31 Henway "Deluxe Polecat" touring car! When Roth and Ivo originally built the car back in 1963, they only intended it as a show car - primarly for display on the Taiwanese and South-East Asian show-car circuit . Not anticipating that the car would ever actually be street-driven, they went a bit overboard on the powerplant and swapped in a completely chrome-plated, but also, fully race-modified and absolutely 'built to the tits', 440-inch, '59 Reo Gold Comet truck engine! Shortly after I acquired the car via some overseas connections in Taiwan last year, I got the car back here and put it on the street. Naturally too, I couldn't resist and started beating on it a bit. When I did though, the original Henway muffler bearings - which Roth and Ivo had foolishly kept and used in their original build - and which were never designed to stand up to the immense torque of a radical, race-built, 440-inch 'Reo V8 - soon gave out under the strain. The muffler bearings eventually completely shattered, causing a severe vibration and front-end 'death-wobble' that was so bad, it nearly rattled the automatic-tranny shift buttons right out of the car's genne' '58 Edsel 'Tele-Touch' steering column! Believe me too, fixing it was was an absolute bitch! Have you ever tried buying new muffler bearings for a '31 Henway touring car??? The problem is, that the originals were made of drop-forged, heat-treated Kryptonite and because Kryptonite is now banned by the E.P.A as a biological hazard, nobody stocks the damn things anymore! Even the guy at NAPA just looked at me like I was crazy or something and threatened to call the cops when I asked if they had some in stock!!!! Fortunately, through my connections with Henway Motors in my volunteer capacity as their official corporate historian and archivist, I was given access and allowed free reign to search the attic and basement store rooms of the famed 'Henway Motor Car Museum' in East Dimwit Nebraska. It took a full week of searching through old, cob-web covered parts bins and opening hundred of dusty old wooden shipping crates, but I lucked out. I was able to find one N.O.S set of heavy-duty 'service replacement' muffler bearings, packed in cosmoline and still in their original circa-1931 packaging! Once I got them home, to make sure they could stand up to the power of the massive race-built Reo V8 this time - and to insure against *any* possible future failure, I first sent the bearings out to have them case-hardened and then. shot-peened and micro-polished. Then, 'just to be sure', (I didn't want to have to go through this ever again!) I had some nuclear physicist drinking buddies built a cyclotron in my basement, where I immersed the bearings in a Boise-Einstein condensate-enriched atmosphere and then, bombarded them with electrons at 500KV and 4000HZ for30 straight days and nights! Problem solved! The bearings are now damn near indestructible! And man, do they ever work too! Since installing my new and now, "cyclotron-fortified" muffler bearings, the car rides smoothly again and goes straight as an arrow - right up to 140 mph and beyond, with nary even a hint of vibration or front-end shake! Mart3406 (Official Henway Motors Corporate Historian and Archivist .....and now, '59 Reo 'Gold Comet' 440 V8 hop-up expert too!) ========================
There are a couple possibilities that know one has mentioned: If your caster is set at 7 degrees at the kingpin, what degree is the crossmember welded in at? How much rake do you have rear to front? What angle is your drag link running from the front wheel to the steering box? It could be possible that the 4 or 5 degrees of caster works better due to less bind in the shocks and spring which can be fixed with adjustable perch bolts and a steering dampner. You definately dont need a panhard bar on a side steer application, a panhard bar is used to center the axle and to stop frame roll in a cross steer frontend. The steering dampner is used to dampen steering and will not elimanate a "death wobble". I use the steering dampner to prevent road shock only. If your running taller tires at the rear,(which most of us do on these types of cars)., that changes the caster of the axle and the front crossmemeber. Im not sure if any of this helps in your situation but thats what I would take a look at, I had a similar problem a couple years ago and reduced the caster and used adjustable perch bolts to take some bind out of the spring and added a steering dampner. I havent had a problem since.
Hmmmmm. Three pages already....not bad.I think you guys lost your magic smoke during front end installation and now need to replace it. Just my opinion...
He says that if the road is smooth it is ok it only acts up on ruff roads.Leads me to think it is in the shocks. They are fighting each other causing a rebound from side to side. On smooth roads,how does the car react on braking and take off?Is the problem there when you slow down or take off on smooth roads?
The Jalopy Journal
