Rear DW?!?!?

[BGKYK5]

After my last wheeling trip, my truck came down with a bad case of the Death Wobble. So I tightened up all the u-bolts, the spring bolts, and the shackle bolts on the front end (the shackle bolts were surprisingly loose). The DW went away and I was happy. Now it has a case of rear Death Wobble. I have never heard of Death Wobble effecting the rear axle before, has anyone else? In fact this means I have to re-evaluate what I though caused DW. There is no doubt in my mind that the wobble now starts with the rear axle, and it was clearly the front axle before. I know the front end is still tight because the bushings still squeak like a box of terrified guinea pigs. I haven't checked, but I assume the rear shackles must be pretty loose. I'll tighten them up and post up the results.

 

[sweetk30]

i had a bad dw kind of thing under breaking on my old truck. ditched the 2 peice driveline with worn ujoints and carrier bearing from 1979 and went 1 peice and no more problems.

dont always look in the front for death wobble . check the rear stuff also.

 

[BGKYK5]

It only took me a year to fix it.

It was loose rear u-bolts. Well, not loose exactly - my rear spring packs has little spacers from the factory between the leaves to reduce interleaf friction. When I moved my rear axle back 1.5" they didn't extend out to the u-bolts anymore. When braking the open spaces between the leaves beyond the spacers would collapse a bit, loosening up the u-bolts and starting the whole rear end vibrating as the axle rotated back and forth a little relative to the spring plate. I hope that makes sense. After looking at it for a while I figured that was probably the problem. I took apart the spring packs to remove the spacers and found "S" shaped center pins - so I'm pretty sure that was it. I've been driving the truck all week and haven't had any problems (apart from the normal square bias plies).

In case you haven't noticed the truck hasn't gotten much love in the past year.

 

[Fordum]

I used to know a girl who had a bad case of rear end death wobble.......

Doesn't help you any, but it sure brings back fond memories for me!

Glad you got yours fixed.