I’m thinking you are worrying too much, seems pretty rare to get wobbles especially new. I’ve logged over 100,000 miles on bone stock 17+ SD’s all good, I think a bit of the wobble theme comes from guys who mod the trucks. Or I guess buy a chev or dodge.....

 

It May or may not happen.
Just keep an eye out for it so you are ready when it happens.
Don't forget no trailer till after 1000 mi

I had it in my 2005 f350 stock. Happened a few times and yes scared the **** out of me. There was no fix fir it then and no way to show it happened

 

Can confirm. My buddy and I test drove some '19 Super Dutys 2 years ago, and when we were cruising in one of them, we came up onto a bridge and it started to death wobble violently. On a brand new truck with less than 100 miles on it. I didn't order a truck at this time, but my buddy did. '19 F350 CCSB 6.2L. With less than 5k miles, before a lot of people even do their first oil change, he experienced it with this truck too, just after pulling out of his driveway and climbing to highway speed.

I will note that I've been in and driven a handful of other Super Dutys of this generation and aside from the test drive experience, I haven't had this issue personally otherwise. I'm hoping this isn't something I have to deal with in my new '21 but time will tell. I stand by what I've said in the past about there being something inherently wrong with the geometry and rigidity of the front suspension and steering that so many people are having these issues. A lot of people have noted that the caster angle on the 17-19 trucks was horrendously shallow, and lowering the trucks slightly for the 2020+ model year trucks was part of Ford's solution to help mitigate death wobble issues and regain some camber angle. There have not been that many reports of these issues on the 2020 trucks but again, these trucks are mostly still fairly new and low mile in comparison, so it seems like this was effective at the moment but I think over the next year or 2, we will really have an answer.

As far as aftermarket solutions for the trucks that are suffering from death wobble, you can install steeper caster angle bushings, this seems to be extremely effective and is cheap/easy to do. The PMF track bar is also a very good solution to the issues people are seeing with premature track bar bushing wear. Ford's answer of an "Updated Steering Stabilizer" is a slap in the face to anyone that goes to the dealer to fix this issue. There is no reason a steering stabilizer should be necessary to keep the front end together. It is a band aid to a deeper issue.

To add to what was said above though, there are less people that have suffered death wobble than have suffered it. But, nobody makes a post about not having death wobble so it's certainly deceiving when you see a bunch of posts with people describing their death wobble experience.

 

I wouldn't worry, just enjoy the truck.
I've had it twice. keep an eye out for excessive bump steer as a precursor to dw. You can look up old ford tsb's on excessive or sustained wheel oscillation for a reference on parts that need addressed if it occurs. That fixed it for me plus I added fox ss.
if it does happen and you know what needs fixed and/or you have a competent dealer to fix you can take care of it right away and be done with it. Dw sucks but its fixable.

 

i follow their channel and saw this video the other day. Trish is awesome. Most women wouldn't drive a truck with a known dw problem and she does it while towing their rv. Very cool couple.
But yeah, it's definitely something to be concerned about and Ford has a class action lawsuit slapped on them for this. Like I said earlier, it's been an issue since 2005, they need to squash this thing.

 

yeah, the dealer I bought my 17 from told me they put an "updated steering damper" on and I'll never have the problem again. I told him I knew better and this wasn't my first rodeo. I went through it with an 08. Changed track bar, changed shocks to bilstein, new damper, changed the caster and finally scrapped the michelin's for new Goodyear's (total cost of all that was well north of $2k out of my pocket and some stained underwear).
A new steering damper is a ridiculous solution by Ford. I'm disappointed. They’re trying to get out of it on the cheap. Yeah, that damper will keep the wheels at bay for 20,000 miles, but that dw will be back and they know it, but they also know a lot of people might buy a new truck before that dw comes back.
I have a 78 bronco, those have live axles and cool springs too, but I've never heard of those Broncos (and F150') having dw. Maybe these current Ford engineers need to make a phone call to the ones that designed the 73-79 suspensions.

 

I wouldn't worry about it at all. Does the DW as we like ot call it exist in some trucks? Yes. Does it exisit in a significant percentage of trucks? No. I have heard of it but never epxerienced it personally. I know many, many people (not on message boards) that have never even heard of it or experienced it. This is message board for these trucks with countless members. This is where you will see a large number of people with issues with their trucks as they came here looking for knowledge or advice. It is to be expected. Even guys who have experienced it, many of them buy another Super Duty anyway. If they were that concnered, they would go with a different truck I would think. You should do the same. If you are really that concerned, you should strongly consider a GM/Ram instead. I say get the new Suprer Duty and send it.

 

The only time I had death wobble was while towing my 11K bumper pull toy hauler when I hit a very severe bump in the highway. There were a couple of contributing factors. First, I had recently put Rancho 9000XL shocks on and set the front to a setting of 3, which was too low. Most guys go with a 5 on the front. Second, the WDH wasn't configured quite right. Not enough force was being returned to the front axle. Once I corrected both of those issues I haven't experienced death wobble again in almost 20,000 miles, most of that towing.

There are plenty of threads on death wobble here on the forum, which makes it seem like an epidemic. Out in the real world, it happens much less.

 

going to a Ram doesn’t solve the problem. Ram's/ Dodge HD's have the same problem. They have live front axles too.

You can go GM, but they have their own front end concerns.

 

Where I work, our fleet of field vehicles, about 110 trucks, are all F250 4wd SC 6.2. When we have no budget problems we get twenty new trucks each year, all the same. We keep stock tire size but go to more aggressive all terrain tires. The rest of the trucks are stock. We have no problematic death wobble history. We keep equipment in the trucks all the time and tow different size and different weight trailers based on the job as needed. We have a mix of paved main roads and a lot of stone gravel and dirt roads that can be pretty rough at times. Whenever there is any identified problem pattern with our fleet of trucks or trailers, we get notified to bring our trucks in. We have never had any death wobble trend. I asked my shop mechanic a little while ago if he had seen any of our trucks with death wobble and he said only once in a 2017 that my buddy drove that I already knew about. Our trucks get service every 4000 miles and they always check the bushings and front end etc each time while the truck is on the lift. With the one 2017 death wobble the mechanic was able to reproduce the death wobble and they checked and found a worn bushing and tie rod joint on one side. Death wobble does happen, but like others wrote above, death wobble is probably not as common as it seems from the forums. I saw death wobble on another 12-16 era Super Duty in heavy traffic on I-80 in July. It looked horrible and scary. The truck looked stock and was towing a mid sized landscape trailer. I could see the front wheels going and the guy’s hands on the steering wheel violently shaking back and forth super fast. He was able to bail out to the break down lane and slow down. Scary.

 

There is a LOT of mis-information in this world about Death Wobble.
1. It CAN happen with ANY type steerable wheels mounted to a spindle (axle)
Leaf spring, IFS, 2WD, 4WD, solid axle, single wheel (motorcycle), whatever.
Is is most prevalent in solid axle, coil sprung type vehicles.
A person MAY need to get off the brand specific forums (Ford, Ram, Jeep)to learn more about it.
Learn all you can before saying it will not happen with XXXX type steering/suspension.
My first experience with it was a 1955 IH R130 2WD with leaf springs.. I had it with a 1979 Bronco, all stock, 50,000 miles.
I had it happen with a farm tractor......2 WD/ no springs/suspension at all.
Remember Newton’s third law.......for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. THAT alone is the “cause”.
How it is controlled is the question.

 

Nice! TCNashville. I couldn't agree more with what has been said on here. I do think Ford got a little happy in the height department with the 12-19 250's which led to very little camber add in slightly worn to well worn suspension parts and you have the potential for DW. I have a 16 CCSB with 134k and have had to change the trackbar ball joint 3 times and the bushing once in 43k miles. Last ball joint am able to lube it and at about 1k miles can tell it needs greased again. I did just install the PMF dual ss system with the bilstien shocks and am very happy with it so far. To the OP, drive it and enjoy.

Glen

 

Seems like I read on the threads somewhere that "all" were subject to it, so this is good to know! LOL!! Thank you! Although I do have a '78 that was plagued with it as soon as we lifted it and put bigger tires on it.

 

I’m on my 4th SD (1999, 2005, 2016, 2019), with this 2019 being the first used (32k miles). All 3 previous SD’s had minimum of 68k miles without any DW. This is the first vehicle I have ever experienced death wobble with. Unnerving but thankfully have only experienced it once while towing, our 5th wheel RV. Several times with truck only, 45mph to 80 mph.

Purchased Aug 29, last DW event was around 36.5k miles, now have almost 40k. I am still very attentive to bumps on the road and always on guard. Can’t seem to relax as I used to.

 

yeah, I've never heard of a leaf sprung front suspension truck going through a death wobble event, maybe it has happened, but if so, it would be due to something different than what we see in the coil spring trucks. This is my opinion based on what I have been through with this. I have had at least 10 leaf spring trucks in my days and put a ton of miles on them, never a hint of dw, but I've dealt with it on several of my coil sprung trucks.

I have a 4" lift on my 78 bronco with 35" tires, but yet to experience it and I haven't seen anything about it on any of the Bronco forums I have been a member of for 10+ years.

I just think these late model ford, dodge and jeep trucks (suv's) suffer from the same faults. When everything remains tight and in spec, nothing happens, but it seems like the second 1 component slips out of place, it rears its ugly head.

They should just put dual stabilizers on these trucks from the factory and call it good. Dial them up to have a lot of resistance. I wonder how many people have been injured or killed due to this issue? I tell you what, the 2008 F350 I had went through extremely violent dw events in the same curve in Flint, MI at Highway speeds (M23 North to I69 West interchange). Whenever I pulled our 43' toy hauler I had to take a different route. I can only imagine what would happen if I went tooling through there with that trailer in tow and a car or semi along side me. I got lucky, it happened to me multiple times in that spot with no trailer attached, so I planned ahead. Some people haven't had that fortunate luxury and it ended very badly for them.