My good friend has an 82 F-350 with a terrible shaking problem at most any speed...especially low ones. The truck was weighed last week and is at 8900 lbs. It weighs that all the time with his service body and tools.

Yesterday I replaced the master cylinder and front calipers to address some brake issues. While re-installing the wheels...I noticed that the wheel does not center on the front hub. The hub has no provisions for hubcentric mounting. So I assume the lug nuts take care of centering the wheel. Only problem is the wheels have pilot holes (plain holes, no taper) and the lug nuts are flat backed ones with no taper. They do however have washers or spacers attached to the them. So it was obvious I could have mounted the wheel as far off center as 1/8". I could clearly see the wheel did not line up with the old paint on the hub at all. So as the wheel rotates the tire/wheel goes round and round off center. I centered them the best I could but it eventually goes to what appears to be off center.

Surely this would be the cause of the shakes. The front end was completely rebuilt two years ago by a competent truck/alignment shop. The tires are new Goodyear Wrangler HT's LR-E. Tire shop said the wheels balanced OK...not great but they did balance. One took a fair amount of weight. They didn't mention anything to him about the wheels and lug nuts. Shocks are new as well as the stering linkage. But man will it ever shake the mirrors off the door at 40 mph.

Does he have late model F-Series wheels on an obviously older rig? OR what is the correct way to center the wheel? Surely Ford didn't expect the wheel to remain centered by just the clamping force of the nuts. He bought it used and I imaging someone bought newer wheels for an older truck.

Can he get some different lugs to cure the problem or does he need totally different wheels and nuts? Hope this isn't unsafe. They seem to work other than the off center issue.

 

the wheels should have every other hole on one side with the crush for tapered lug nuts, the other side of the wheel should have the crush for the other four holes. are the front wheels the only ones that are flat,? or are the rears the same.

 

Not sure what you mean by the "crush" for tapered lug nuts. I didn't check the rears. I only noticed this on the fronts cause I was working on the front brakes. I can check the rears.

All I know is the front hubs have nothing to center the wheel hub hole. And the studs are not tapered coming out of the hub. The wheel bolt holes look just like drilled holes with no taper for a conical seat lug nut. The lug nuts have flared thick washer on the backs of them...as if they would spread the load on a flat faced wheel and not cause the nut to gouge into the paint of the wheel. That tapered thick washer is somehow attached to the lug nut but spins free of the nut.

I just get this funny feeling from the design on the front hub that he is supposed to be using conical seat lug nuts. The hub hole in the wheel is usually lined up via something on the hub itself. Then flat faced nuts hold the wheel tight against the hub. But this truck hub has no such provisions. There is just enough room in the lug pattern for the studs to come through...but then again too much to be perfectly centered.

They dont look like chevy or dodge wheels. I'm positive they are ford wheels....just from a later model or something. I'm not much of a historical expert on when changes like this came about on one ton trucks.

 

There should be an alignment pin hole in the wheels, and a corresponding rollpin sticking out of the hub(this may just be on the rear, been a while since I did anything with a dually), and 4 of the studs should have what looks like the cone on a tapered lug nut.