72 F250: have had an alignment and front tires ballaned twice but still have a pretty good vibration in the steering wheel at 60+ mph. any ideas?????

 

Check the wheel bearings, they may need replaced. Your hubs may also need turned (not sure though). I would also check the brake shoes they may be draging in an odd way. My brakes have done this before. I installed new springs - problem solved.

 

How old are the tires? I had a set of tires on my 64 Galaxie that looked very good, but had been on there too long, and made a vibration, even after being balanced.

 

You're on the right track - vibration in the steering wheel means something is out of balance or out of round in the front end. If the balancing was done right, then it could be a bad tire, bent rim, bad brake drum. Were the tires spin balanced? If so and the tire guy is paying attention, he should be able to tell you if something is bent or out of round. Bad tires are hard to spot sometimes, you usually have to swap the fronts and the rears to see if the problem changes. If everything looks straight and round, do the front<->rear swap - if the vibration moves from the steering wheel to the seat, then it's probably tires...

 

More than likely it a tire out of balance, or a loose belt in a tire. Rotating is a good test to see if it goes away. If you frontend guy inspected the linkage prior to alignment he should have found any loose steering linkage and kingpins. I had the top bushing of a kingpin fail on mine causing vibrations. Found it when I converted to power disk brakes.

 

A front end out of alignment, a bad ball joint or bad king pin won't cause a vibration - there has to be some rotating piece that's out of round or out of balance. The out of round or balance will cause a suspension part that has play in it to shake, but it's the out of round/balance that the real cause of the vibration. Similarly, a good shock can hide an out of balance condition by dampening the vibration, but a bad shock can't cause a vibration. So if you "fix" a vibration by replacing a non-rotating part, you've not really fixed the cause, just the symptom.

That having been said, nothing is totally "in balance". And bad shocks, ball joints, tie rod ends, etc. should definitely be fixed for other reasons.

The one exception would be a shimmy caused by some sort of positive feedback oscillation due to tire wandering or something like that, but those are usually pretty easy to spot - they start and get worse until you slow down enough to break the feedback.

 

Do not leave out the possibility of having a hub/drum or hub/disc out of balance, Ford had some bad balance jobs slip by. Best when new to you used truck while checking the brakes is to mount the hubs with dry bearings without seal then check the balance, if out you'll see and feel it later.
With the hub/drum or hub/disc in balance your down to rims and tires.
With 80% of the idiots balancing wheels these days use the cone which centers on the punched flashing resulting in a balanced eccentric wheels.
A noisey tire, goes whop whop not by tread design is a sign of one delaminating, thrill ride when one comes apart above 100 mph trust me on this one been there done that.
With the adjustable spyder there is slop in the linkage again a crappy eccentric balance job.
They can get you in the ball park or better yet when it's not centered they'll tell you you have a bad rim when the whole wheel jumps around as if mounted on an eccentric.
With everything in spec these old trucks are a simple and smooth joy to drive.

 

if you have headers make sure your shift linkage is not touching them,
mine was barely touching and made vibration.

 

Thanks for all the feedback guys, I've put new shocks in front and new rotors and pads, also new tie rod steering end. the tires were on the truck when i bought it, but they're brand new. I didn't have the new rotors turned before I installed them so I guess I'll try that and new calliper springs as there may be a brake pad drag. I noticed the rotors were very warm when the guy had my wheels off to align them and the shops only a couple of miles away.

 

If the steering rag joint is bad will give vibration, due to metal to metal as play.