I had an issue with death wobble a while back so I replaced the ball joints and all the other pertinent steering components/joints. I also replaced the track bar. Once I got steering stabilizers in place I knocked out the rest of the steering issues. I tightened up the play in the steering gearbox also.

Over the past few thousand miles I have paid attention to the front end a bit. I got a camera for other purposes but figured I could use it to watch the front end also. Ive been doing that for about 2000 miles now.

What I have found is the steering components and radius arms all work as they should - there is no rotation of the axle and there is no bounce in the rotation of the knuckles/tie rod movement that isnt cause by steering wheel input or bounce from the steering movement on bumps transferred to the steering wheel (very minimal).

The movement I do see is up/down with the springs - I would say a combination of tires and shock absorbers.

However, and on-point with the title of the thread, I have found that the stability is worse when turning left, as opposed to right, when crossing rough road on the highway. That would mean the track bar is under compression on a left turn. Conversely, the track bar would be under tension with a right turn.

If the track bar is u der compression that force is spreading the suspension apart, however slightly.

Is that spread of the suspension the cause for the decrease in stability?

 

In my Jeep-owning years, death wobble was almost always caused by a loose track bar. The train of thought was to tighten it on the frame side until you couldn't tighten it anymore, then tighten it more. The other issue is the axle side mount would wallow out when it was loose, allowing it to move more. Another common theme was redoing that hole to make it a perfect hole again. I believe the most of the death wobble problems on these trucks are also track bar related.

 

Ah yes, the wonders of Jeep ownership. Brings back fond memories of riding in my TJ and it start bucking like a bull at 55mph...lol. I've had two TJ Jeeps and one CJ, and like said above, the trackbar was almost always the issue with death wobble in the Jeeps. These newer superduty trucks have a similar suspension, but it is much beefier. I've never experienced the death wobble in either of my F250s (01 and 14). It wouldn't surprise me that the trackbar is the culprit of most of it though.

 

It seems like any time "track bar" is mentioned Jeeps are brought up. Funny how that works.

Im still curious as to what I asked about the axle spread and the stability. Under that scenario the load on the springs is transferred from the springs to the track bar = lightening up the load on the springs. The load on the axle as a whole isn't really changing (like hooking up a heavy bumper pull trailer where the tongue weight pulls weight off the front), but the forces are changing when pulling a turn. The downward weight is just going different places under different turns.

The track bar mount on the axle is tight, the fitment of the mounting bolt is tight (no wollered out holes in the mount - new track bar) and the track bar ball joint on the axle was replaced. So that should pretty well be out of the question - which gets back to my point about the shocks and tires. That, for now, answers the question of the bounce I still get at times. So that is not what I am asking - how to resolve that issue, because I already have a logical direction. My question was - and a bit more information - since the issue is not on-going, and only under certain circumstances, there has to be another cause - is the load from the springs transferring to the track bar (the "spreading of the axle" affect described in my first post) the cause of the loss of stability? In other words, is that "less stable" condition the trigger point for the bounce to occur when the bounce does not occur all the time?