2K F350 7.3 4x4 What would bad trac bar bushings do as far as drive performance? I looked underneath and saw bad bushings, been haveing bad shimmy at 40-45 mph, just wondering if thats it?

 

Boy, a bad shimmy can be alot of things. Aligment is what i would check first. Check ball joints and tie rods too.A bad hub could also cause issues.The track bar basiclly centers the axle between the frame and keeps it there. With worn bushings you will usually experience the truck wonder as you steer down the road. If your track bar bushing are that bad i would also check your swaybar bushings. Changing the bushings on the track bar is pretty straight forward, one trick is to boil the bushing in water before install. Another set of hands helps too.

 

List of replaced recently: Both front hub assemblies, Upper/Lower ball joints on both sides, sway bar, sway bar links, tie rod ends, drag link, gear box, brakes, calipers, rotors, duel stabilizers, new tires...I think thats it. I need new track bar bushings, and new leaf spring bushings. I don't think they are the cause though. And alignment by 3 different shops.
Started when front level springs and balljoints put in....

 

Been there, done that. After you assure that you don't have anything really loose with your front suspension, you can screw around chasing minimally worn components for thousands of dollars if you want . . . like I first did. But, if your truck is like my van, it won't fix it. Rather, shimmy/DW is a luck of the draw problem with all coil over solid axle suspensions incl. stock Fords and Dodges. (Chevy's are indep. frnt suspension.)

But an opposing dual gas pressurized shock system will do it. Just read what TurboStew says and do it for some piece of mind:

Quadvan Death Wobble:

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I did it and it cured my Death Wobble and it will likely cure your "shimmy" too.

 

Have you tried taking both tires off the front and put the rear ones on to see if anuthing changes?

 

Tim, our trucks a leaf spring suspensions in the front, not coils. And to the OP those bad bushing can contribute to the problem but most likely are not your problem I would look at those spring bushings first as everything hangs on them.

 

Thanks Truckee! I forget that although my van is a 2002, it has a 2007 coil spring front differential and yours are leaf springs.

You will see a lot of lifted leaf sprung 4x4's with dual opposing shocks used as a steering stabilizer for a reason. And that reason is that the two tires are connected by a tie rod.

While it is true that DW is more common in coil spring front suspensions, it does happen with leaf springs as well. If the "shimmy" that the OP is complaining about is one wheel pushing against the other wheel and then that wheel pushing back, increasing in frequency and force until the vehicle has to be stopped, then the suggested dual opposing gas pressurized shocks will stop it -- regardless of whether it is coil or leaf sprung.

If your truck has never had DW, don't read the following, you don't need to do anything.

Truckee, at the risk of being considered even more crazy than you may already think I am, here is my theory of DW (of which "shimmy" is its baby brother):

IMO, "Death Wobble" is caused by one tire (e.g., the left) hitting a bump and pushing through the tie rod up against the rubber sidewall (which is, effectively, an undampened spring - it is rubber filled with air after all -- you know how a rubber basketball filled with air bounces?) on the right tire causing a "bump steer" to the right, resulting in a reaction of the right sidewall springing/pushing back through the tie rod to the rubber sidewall of the left tire which repeats with increased violence until the vehicle stops or nearly stops rolling.

In my experience of chasing DW down, it has nothing to do with the track bar, ball joints, or caster. It is merely an undampened spring (with the air-filled rubber sidewalls of the two front tires being the springs). After avoiding DW for only one year after $3,000 of front end work, I installed dual opposing Bilstein gas pressurized SHOCKS (not stabilizers) using a Rough Country dual stabilizer bracket and haven't had a DW since.

The opposing gas pressurized shocks push against each other thereby cancelling each other out and, thus, do not put any pressure on the steering box. An opposing dual stabilizer set up with actual steering stabilizers (which have resistence both pushing in and pullling out) would create tremendous resistence on the steering box (possibly causing premature wear and looseness). (FYI, in chasing down DW I tightened up my steering box and the DW actually got worse! I.e., I increased the effectiveness of the bump steer!)

In summary, if you wouldn't drive your truck without vertical shocks at each wheel to dampen the sprung mass of the body, why would you drive your truck without horizontal shocks connecting the tie rod to the differential to dampen the horizontal spring effect of the rubber on those big sidewalled tires you have on the front of your truck?

Finally, anyone who says that dual opposing gas pressurized shocks as a steering stabilizer are just "masking" the underlying problem is . . . mistaken. Dampening is not masking.

For those of you who believe that . . . , please take off the vertical shocks at each of the four wheels on your truck and see if you like driving it while it bounces uncontrollably up and down without the benefit of "masking" which the vertical shocks provide by dampening the vertically sprung mass of your truck's body.

O.K., I reserve the right to be proven wrong. I am inexperienced in most of the stuff discussed on this forum. But I am not inexperienced with DW. I have had it happen driving downhill on ice, I have had it driving downhill towing a tandem yard cement mixer. It deserves its name and deserves to be respected ... and cured. And I described the cure that worked for me and a lot of other people.

 

Steering stabilizers are there to cushion or stabilize your steering components from sudden bumps or other obsticles(rocks while 4x4ing), that is why they are valved 50/50.They are very good to have when you have large tires. You can easily drive without a stabilizer as some trucks don`t even have them and drive fine. Your wheel shocks on the other hand have completely different valving to stop the oscillation of the suspension when driving down the road, you NEED them as the wheel and suspension would oscillate uncontrolably. Steering stabilizers should not be used to cure an obvious problem(like wheel shimmy) otherwise you will be masking it and still have the problem.