If you trust them and they would do it for $200 I think thats wht I would do. I have never done them personally but I know someone who did. Major pain in the *** doing it in your driveway. Took about a whole day and many cases of beer. (maybe why it took most of a day)

 

X2 on the $200. That's a very reasonable price.
I would not do it for that even if I was set up for it.
That ain't even a months worth of booze for me.

 

Just ordered up some new ball joints and axle pivot bushings. Still trying to decide if I want to tackle them myself or have a shop do it.

If I were to do it myself, what kinds of tools would I need? I imagine some form of a press. If so, which one? Any recommendations?

 

A pickle fork and a BFH to start with. A Hydrolic Jack
has helped me also.

 

Is that to press in and out the ball joints and pivot bushings?

 

Ball joint press makes it ALOT easier. Should be able to borrow 1 from your parts store. If you buy 1 dont buy cheap.

 

Penetrating oil and watch the video below. This dude has some great d.y.i. videos.

 

Thanks for the video, that's excellent!

 

Well, after a long weekend, I have new ball joints, axle pivot bushings, inner/outer tie rods/links, and a new driver's axle u-joint that I didn't know I needed. (Crunching isn't a good sound in a u-joint).

Either way, drives a WHOLE lot better. Nice and solid, turns really well, etc.

But, unfortunately, it didn't help the shake any.

 

A-B, I haven't been following this thread much, but after hearing everything you replaced, I went back to your first post on this problem, and read this part:

I think if you can feel a vibration/shake down at 5 - 10 MPH, it's going to be something out of round, bent, etc. Not tire balancing, as 5 -10 MPH is too low a speed for an imbalance to show up.

A few suggestions - Get someone to walk behind one rear wheel as you drive straight forward. As they walk/jog to keep up, they need to be looking at the rear tire at the road, and at the side of the wheel as viewed from behind. Do same on other rear wheel.
Then drive in reverse, holding steering wheel STILL, don't correct, while person checks out both fronts for the same thing.

Can put all 4 ends up on jackstands, and run at an idle, and see if wheels/tires wobble/out of round, etc.

If getting really desperate, can pull wheels off and use a dial indicator to check out runout of the hubs.

When one of my kids was off at college years ago, he called me about a vibration problem that was getting worse on his M. Gr. Mrq., he thought it was in the rear. I visited and brought jackstands and jack. Put rear axle up on stands, And he put it into gear and let it idle. He had to let off the brake slowly, and I had to spin one rear wheel with gloves on to get it at same speed, as it had an open rear end, and it just can be the luck of the draw whether both rears spin up, or only one spins about twice as fast. Anyway, I held a ball-point pen braced against my knee for stability, and brought the pen tip close to the wheel rim at the tire, to check for in-out wobble (like a bent axle, bent wheel), and for up-down wobble (excessive hub runout, wheel runout). That all looked reasonable to me on both sides.

So I had him drive slowly straight down the street, and I could see the rear bumper doing a side to side waggle. As I jogged behind, I could see one tire do a weird sudden sideways movement and quick return. Pulled that wheel off, and rolled it down the street, and then could see it. It was the tire, probably internal cords going. Just rolling the tire slowly on the ground wasn't enough to really catch it, a faster run showed it. Replaced tires, all was fine.

 

For a constant shake, I would look for a bent rim, or a tire that has slipped a belt internally. I would take it to a tire shop and have them put each rim on a spin balancer and watch it from all angles. I had one bent before,,, drove me nuts till I spun them.
And although yours is not a dually, I had the problem on my 02 F350 4x4 CC dually, where I replaced shocks, and was trying to figure it out, finally jacked up rear, had wife start it up, put in gear and let off brake,,, my duals were going up and down, seems when they put a spacer in between rims, because they had 315/75/16's on it, the rims were not able to be "hub centric" as designed, so I took my uni-bit, tapered 4 holes on spacer and outer rim, and use 4 conical lug nuts to center both on studs. Again, I would look to your rims and tires.

 

I think you're both right in that it's related to the tires. I was thinking about what you said and I paid extra attention as I rolled up to a stop sign, and even as I was just barely moving (no more than 2 - 3mph), I could still feel a *thump* *thump* *thump* like I was going over tiny speed bumps.

The tires are "relatively" new. Probably a year or two, and have a good 20 - 30k left on them. It'd be a shame if I damaged one and they have to be replaced so soon (or worse, deal with this shake for 30,000 more miles...)

However, I never thought about the rims. They're really nice steel rims, but I pulled them off of another truck (which was in great condition) and have no idea if they're straight or not. I may put each end up on jack stands again and have my wife slowly give it some gas and see if I can see them wobbling. Or if I can see a high spot.