Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire “Death Wobble” in truck

Was driving one of my service trucks and came into a bridge. Not going very fast, ~50mph. The front end (both tires in unison) wobbling left and right.

I can recreate it at a slow speed so something is up. If I turn the wheel a little and get some lateral pressure on the tires it stops immediately.

What is going on here? A bad tire?

Could be a bad tire but I imagine that you have a 2nd Gen. Dodge. If so, PM me your e-mail and I will send you an in depth article on how to cure this problem.

Can be caused by a number of things. Worn steering components,bad ball joints,worn or loose wheel bearings,loose lug nuts,out of alignment front end,out of balance wheels. Scary ain't it!

my 97 dodge was doing bad i completely rebuilt the front end 4 yrs ago, it just recently started doing it again.

can you post a link to it here.

No. The article is from Diesel World magazine (6/2010 issue) and it's 5 pages long so I don't feel like uploading each individual page to an image hosting service and then posting each page here. I'd be happy to e-mail it to anyone who is interested.

Also, on the Cummins Forum there's quite a few postings regarding Death Wobble, but they are quite complicated and fairly complex. The article I have from Diesel World magazine is much easier to understand and has photos.

What make and model?

My 2003 Dodge 2500 w/Cummins just had the front end rebuilt for the second time. The clue was that they couldn't align the front end... I never got to the wobble stage. Truck only has 118,000 miles on it.

thats a problem with mine also, front passenger side tire always wear on the outside edge of the tire.

2 or 4wd?

What make?

If it’s a coil sprung Ford 4x4 check your track bar bushing. It can be a lot of other stuff but of the 3 times it’s happened to me 2 times it was the track bar bushing where it mounts to the frame. The third one was a ragged out ball joint. Scary stuff whatever the cause, hope you get it ironed out.

I had a 1979 Ford F-150 4WD that would get that. Always thought it was a bad sway bar, and I'd replace it, and before long it would do it again. Worst Ford I've owned, bar none.

This is a 12 F450 4wd. Just had front end work done a couple months ago. Had ball joint replaced then.

Maybe the front end shop didn’t torque something properly or reused a torque to yield fastener. Be something to check into if you just had it worked on recently. FWIW the most violent case of death wobble I ever experienced was in a 2012 F450. It was the one with a bad ball joint.

My '03 Dodge 2500 was doing that, it turned out to be that the front stabilizer (looks like a horizontal shock absorber on the front steering components) was bad. Replaced it and the "death wobble" ceased that was 3 years ago. This is an endemic problem with Gen3 Dodge trucks could be a variety of causes. They make after market kits that are supposed to fix the problem.


Here is an explanation of the problem, see #2:

Death Wobble

Track bar ball joint and bushing would cause this back when I worked at Ford, around the time your truck was made.

Could be...

Steering stabilizer shot.
Worn suspension/steering components.
Bad tire

As for pass side tire wear......notorious on newer Jeeps.
They don't have locking hubs so always scrub.

If the trucks don't have hubs........proiy same curse.
That design with aggressive/fun driving.............just eats friggin front tire.

Both of my XJ's did. Both of my ZJs did. So did my WJ.

Can't help the OP with his 2012

However if, for anyone else- on a 99-04 250/350, 4wd. I had wobble from this needle pack bearing that is inside the hub. Little fugger ain't much bigger than a quarter. If its bad, you'll feel like youre driving on a washboard. Wobble and bobble. Makes a hell of a fuss even if those little rollers are rusty or pitted.

Had one do it after hitting bump..............that one was steering satbilizer only.
Had another do it at certain speed, repeatable.........worn ball joint.
Had a K5 do it...........no bump hit..............just going down the road and tires got into phase.
Wicked ride til I got it way slowed down.
Never did it again.
Had balance checked, was fine.


Buddy had his non solid front axle Jeep do weird stuff. Had a belt going in tire and a bent tie rod.
Hit big pothole in interstate...........no prob, until a few months later.

The old Fords with twin I beams would get it bad. Only way to align the front end was to bend the I beam. My daughter's 07 Jeep Wrangler Safari had it because of bad brake calipers. Finally replaced all four by the time she traded the Jeep in.