First of all I did search for this problem and found conflicting sugestions, the car in question is a model A with a 4" drop axle with hair pins, caster is set @8deg and toe in is with in a 1/8, everything is new ( king pins, wheel brgs etc etc) and tight, also installed a panhard bar just to rule out that was not the problem, also runnin 640x15 bias. The problem is as soon as I hit 95kpm ( 55 or so mph) the front end goes into a CRAY wobble with the front end hopping side to side and I have to slow right down to get it under control. Any idea's??? Cheers Chris
Didja try a VW steering damper? A bit more pricey than the VW units ... but SO-CAL Speed Shop also offers a great little Steering Stabilizer: A: high gloss red with stainless steel clamps and hardware... $40 B: show quality chrome with stainless steel clamps and hardware ... $70
Brother, there is a TON of stuff on here, about that subject!!!!.................I read it, and I don't even OWN a straight axle!!!!! Did you happen to include the term "death wobble", in your search(es)?????? And you are about to ask for MORE conflicting suggestions!!!! Just tryin to help.........................
you have something put together wrong . shouldnt do that . steering dampner may help , but more like alignment ............... steve
start with trueing? your tires.have them balanced on the car.strobelite/roadbalanced.its a place to start. and yeah type in (death wobble) see what ya get. good luck
alighments wont fix a vibration , are you 100% the front ends wobling around? id start by balancing the tires 80% of vibrations are due to the wheels being out of balance . Of course this is taking in considaration all your links and suspention is in good working order...
I had the same problem.. Alll the parts were new installed correctly. I's dotted and T's crossed. Brand new GM 525 box. Radial tires. 56 F1 hubs and drums. Got a steal on a SoCal stabilizer. Problem solved. I agree their should have been no problem but it was there ????????????????????????????????????????????????
Tires are not balanced. Test them for high and low spots, if they are real bad they will need to be shaved. They will have to be balanced on the car.
I agree with having the tires strobe balanced on the car if you can. At least find someone with an on the car spin balancer and have them spin each tire to see if if one (or both) side is out of balance. I had the same problem with my T bucket years ago and attributed it in part to the tires being too narrow for the rims (5-20x15 on 6 inch rims) and the fact that they weren't balanced at the time. I also had some lever action shocks off some British car that may or may not have worked very well. Over the years I have seen a number of cars and trucks that have drums that are out of balance and no amount of off the car balancing will cure the problem.
I read all the wobble threads here. This thread is about high speed wobble, and most others are the real slow speed death wobble. The interesting thing about VW type dampers is that if you have a real bad OEM damper on an old VW bug, it starts to wobble at 40-45 I recall. They don't seem to wobble at super slow speed like the I beam cars do. To complicate things the much older VW bugs with the same front suspension as newer VW bugs, never had a dampers Very confusing...
i had an old stepside ford and the symptoms sound su****iously like a problem i had. turned out to be nothin more than rotted bushings in my panhard.. new bushings, instant fix. just an easy somethin worth lookin at.
Ditch the idea of a damper, until after you figure out what is loose/flimsey/misaligned/worn out/broke/. One hundred and twenty three threads........(your thread is at the top of the search. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/search.php?searchid=9783215
First read ALL the posts related to "death wooble" search to get a handle on solving the issue. Sleuthing your exact problem from a short post is difficult. You have ruled out tire imbalance as a problem, here is a start. There must be no play in any of the steering linkages, king pins or sloppy wheel bearings and the steering box must be properly adjusted to top center to remove play. Since you didn't indicate what type of wheel you were running and the offset I'll start this way, you have too much caster. You should not have to run more than 5* negative (I dont care what anyone else thinks). Next make sure that your tires have even air pressure and not low air pressure, start a 28-30 lbs for a trial run. Next make sure that you have good shock absorbers. As you progress from simple things it gets more complicated. Next is to make sure that your axle is square to your ch***is and rear axle and that the spindles are square to the axle before the toe in was set.. This function is important because to often the easier eyeball method was used to locate your axle and in actuality producing one wheel slightly ahead of the other creating an issue. The is no golden bullet to fix this situation, it is a number of dynamics that come to play at one time and it is a process of elimination. This is just a start.
This may sound a little odd but check the wheels for runout. I ran factory GM sport/rally wheels on three of my vehicles and all three cars vibrated at speed. I yanked a spindle off a s**** car, bought a new rotor for it and made myself "wheel checker" using a dial indicator. I was stunned at how bad/out of round steel wheels can be.
A buddy just had a low mile tire seperate while driving home on a long trip. The tire apparenty let go when it got hot. The tire took out the inner fender well of his old 60's Ford. Apparently the tires were from 1997 which sat around too long. He too kept complainig about a vibration that came and went. Check for a date code. I'm dumping the rubber on my rod if it ever comes back they are at least 17yrs old.
I'm with **** on the shocks, seen it a bunch of times. You can use friction or hydraulics, either way, i'd bet good money that's it. Just my .07 cents, Mott
Your probably not spelling it correctly, Try searching "deth wobbel " It will explain everything you need to know.... he he he (snicker snicker) Sorry I had too Here's the link.... http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=470139&highlight=deth+wobbel
In my experience working in and owning a shop that did front end work, when a vibration occurs at a certain speed (RPM) and goes away above and below that speed(RPM), it's a tire balance problem. Out of round tires are out of round at 20 MPH and 55 MPH. It's the same as a separated radial tire. You feel the lump in direct relation to your speed. Slower and faster depending on the RPM of the tire. WE had a sign right on the front counter where we greeted the customer that said "A front end alignment will not correct wheel shimmy" People would ask for an alignment and then claim that we did not do it when their car still had the shimmy so we tried to head off a problem. Most people won't go in for an alignment until it's too late and the tires are screwed up. I've never had a tire "road force" balanced but I met a Hunter rep at a show the other day and after talking to him I think I will have it done if I encounter a problem child. He wasn't trying to sell me anything. He just had his truck at the same show. He claimed that he could balance a tire on the inside and position the weights so that they did not show through the mag wheel spokes. I'm sure that this requires moving the tire on the wheel so finding someone willing to do that may be iffy. The machine actually applies pressure on the tread as it is spun. The tire may need to be repositioned. It costs more than a simple spin balancer because of the extra labor involved not to mention the cost of the machine. He said that we could go to the Hunter site and find out who had a machine in my area. I started in the late 70s at a shop that had been around since the 50s. It had a tire truer that would shave the tread and it sat in the corner for years and was never needed. They also balanced the tires on the car which balanced the brake drum with it as a unit. They **** canned the truer and bought a spin balancer. They never missed either piece.
Sounds like its all to tight..like it may be binding. Does it start any sooner with a rapid acceleration ?
I found this thread when I searched. I have the same set up. I reduced my caster from 8* to 5* wobble is gone. Hope it works for you.
We had a very similar problem with our A coupe. Here is the thread with all of the suggestions & what made no difference & what the problem finally ended up being. it was N/G tires that were causing our issue. http://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=375262
You can work your *** off to find exactly what the problem is or you can throw a steering dampener on and drive it, instead of diagnosing for 2 months and hundreds of dollars. I had this happen on and nontopic (jeep) the wobble was so bad it cracked the frame at the steering box. I put a new dampener in and no issues. I like to drive em though so thats a better fix for me than to spend my driving season weekends in the garage banging my head against the toolbox or in a shop somewhere making a tech bang his head against his toolbox. Let me stress this though, i am not saying it's o.k. to just deal with it if you put a dampener on it and it still does it even a little bit you need to find the problem and fix it, it's your steering system and not fixing it endangers you and everyone around you on the road. Good luck, I hope a dampener works for you
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