Okay so since this past summer I've been trying to chase down a decent shake/shimmy in my truck. It all started when I was running my 12" wide pacers. I guess the wide wheels just helped to uncover every worn out front end component.. During this time I replaced; upper and lower ball joints (moog), inner and outer tie rods (trw), idler arm (moog), pitman arm (moog), new steering box, new wheel bearings, and added a HD moog steering stabalizer. Basically every steering component has been replaced. I just did the idler arm, steering box and pitman arm today. The truck drove like a dream, whereas before it would shake and shimmy at around 50 and 70-80. After I installed the parts I took it to get am alignment. On the way there it had a slight shimmy to it at 80-85, but I could deal with it.. I mean I am running 38x15.5 mud grapplers afterall. The shop put the alignment to factory specs.. on the ride home the shake/shimmy got way worse at 70-80ish on the interstate.. At this point I'm running out of components to replace.. but I was talking to a buddy of mine and he was telling me since my truck is running such large tires that the tow in has to be just in the yellow part, nearly right on the border of going into the green of the alignment as it keeps everything nice and tight.. any insight on this aswell?
are your tires balanced correctly? i had a bad shake at highway speeds and i got my tires rebalanced and it completely got rid of the shake. another thing it could be is your U joint's on my 97 it would shake at highway speeds and when i let off the gas it would shake 3 times worst. Eventually my U joint snapped and my driveshaft fell completely out one day.
I had a very reputable shop (Davis Off Road, which has sold lifted trucks to almost every state in the country) mount and balance my tires, so I'm quite sure I could rule that out.. I do have yet to check my u-joint, but it seems nice and tight with no play. Now if/when I go about replacing it, do I replace the one at the pinion yoke, on the slip yoke at the transfercase.. or both? Speeking of ujoints, My old 99 Tahoe on 4" ate up u-joints about every 2 months (they either would start squeeking real bad or just flat out designate at hightway speeds).. turns out the RoughCountry blocks had too much taper in them causing it to have a bad pinion angle. Had the blocks milled down and that solved my problem
mine was 2wd so it was the pinion yoke that snapped due to my lift block that i swapped out. i guess it was too much stress and messed up my pinion angle.
A buddy of mine was having a similar problem. He ended up switching his front tires for his rears and it eliminated it entirely.
