Ok obviously not on my truck to start.

I was behind a 6.7 yesterday going down the freeway. We were starting to go over a long bridge, towards the top of the jump in the bridge there are a couple of steel seams / joins which don't line up completely perfectly, but nothing really drastic as far as a thump when you hit it. The 6.7 in front hit this seam doing about 75 when all of a sudden his whole truck starts shaking like a dog trying to poop, sure enough he had a case of the death wobbles!

I am always toying with the idea of upgrading the hulk to a 6.7 (who doesn't, if your honest!), and when I do, something always seems to happen to remind me how much I really do like him. Usually it comes when I start crunching some numbers, but yesterday the death wobble was the eureka moment. I still can't believe they haven't corrected this issue yet, and I find it harder to believe that some government agency hasn't stepped in to speed up a solution to this problem. I believe it has been going on for well over a decade with lots of different vehicles, and usually not helped by big tires and lifted vehicles, but this vehicle appeared pretty much stock.

It scared me just watching as he slammed on the brakes and tried to wrangle that beast back under control, let alone the amazing color transformation that this poor guys lower clothing that must have been occurring! Then I got to thinking on how bad this situation would be with a huge 5th wheel loaded in the bed.

These new trucks are nice, and very expensive, but for me there are still glaring safety issues that are still outstanding, this is enough for me to hold on to the hulk for a while longer. Got to love my old 7.3!

 

Video of death wobble on a stock 2007 F-250 4x4 Super Duty with the factory coil front springs and radius arms. The driver is just humming innocently along, and then when running over a bridge expansion joint, all he*l breaks loose.

The action starts about 1 minute into this 2 minute video. The link above should automatically skip the first boring minute and jump you straight into the scary stuff within 10 seconds.

I tried to "embed" the video into this post like see some people do, but only succeeded in embedding the front page of FTE!

 

This is exactly what I am talking about. A huge *** truck sent crazy by one little seam in the roadway!

How has there not been some headway in researching and correcting this issue. This affects not only the safety of the occupants, but anyone in the vicinity. This has been going on for over a decade, that's what really blows my mind.

As I said earlier, I am happy with the hulk and his straight and steady ways!

 

Well. My 2015 super duty came stock with a steering dampener which is the same one that was installed on my 2004 to stop the death wobble issue. Wonder if that is what their doing to combat this issue.

 

It may be, i did not get chance to look at the front of the truck to see if he had one installed when i passed him. Even so, is that really a true fix? To me (and my uneducated guess it what is actually causing the issue) it would almost seem like a caster issue? If that were the case I can't really see a solution being that hard to come by? Plus with all the innovation they manage to cram into these trucks with every new revision it seem ludicrous to me that they either over look this issue constantly or don't really care to get to the root cause?

 

What I do know is I will be giving all the SD'd built in the past decade a wide berth when driving on a segmented roadway!

 

I saw a video where the powerstrokehelp.com guy Bill Hewitt modded the steering to increase caster and apparently stopped the problem, though I don't know if it created other problems. Here it is, I think:

 

You are probably right. My 2004 started the problem when I installed a leveling kit on the front end. I was also wearing tires unevenly so after a trip to the local off road shop, they installed the dampener and a new caster/camber kit to fix alignment, and the problem went away. The funny thing is my previous truck, a 1996 F-350, had an identical looking front suspension and never had the death wobble. Currently on my new rig, a 2015 F-250, 22,000 miles sitting on some newer Toyo Open Country A/T II tires and all is well. - Steve.

 

Tha problem is that you buy a truck that cost that much and when you have a problem, ford will not fix it. Ford could learn from Lexus,

 

WOW! What causes this? And what is the fix?