Here's what happened to me with a death wobble appearing out of nowhere, makes sense since I placed my front axle in a new position, what's your story and what was the fix? Just goes to show even a rig that is kept in tiptop shape can be affected.
Since there have been some people having issues with the dreaded death wobble I thought that I might share my recent experiences with this issue, what seemed to cause it and what my cure was. What it showed me was that even a minor alteration or geometry or position of the axle itself can cause this condition and not just worn parts and my parts usually don’t get to be worn out before I replace them so it was even more baffling that it happened.
Recently I did a minor suspension lift to my 4Runner, this was off of stock springs and I was looking at an off-road trip to Arizona and didn’t have enough time to build my Frankensprings that were still in the research and acquisition stages. So to get a little lift from stock I decided to just throw on two inches of lift with some shackles. All bushings were replaced and new front shocks were added since the stock shocks ran out of talent. The rear shocks were already aftermarket and were also coilovers to help with the typical 4Runner sag.
As always I do any changes to my rigs in stages so one night at work I put the rears on and the next night I put the fronts on. After putting the rears on I had no issues, got the desired 2 inches and got the same with the fronts, though I did notice that my axle did pivot down a little. As I drove it for the next few days I noted that I now had a slight shimmy in the steering wheel but got a shocker one day under hard braking, major death wobble.
I checked my alignment and though it was not perfect it would have been within specs so I was stumped. The one thing I did notice was that the more gear I put in the rear of my truck the more pronounced and frequent the wobble would become and my truck would sit down in the rear making the front lighter. This made me scratch my head even more so I set out to put my Frankensprings for the rear in high gear, this would allow me to remove the coilover springs and give me a better ride since they are stiff and never really did much for the sag that they advertised.
Last night I finished building my springs for the rear and installed them, pulled off the coilovers from the shocks and gained around 2 inches of lift in the rear. Since I do this at work I was carrying a full load of tools and related Toyota parts so I could feel the wobble going to work. Once I finished the install I put all my stuff back in the bed and instantly noted that the springs supported the load much better since the old ones with the coilovers sagged as much as 3 inches and the new set settled in at around 1 inch so even with all my junk at around 500 pounds I still had a lift that would translate to around 4 inches over the other even with it being loaded.
As to the wobble, it is gone even the shimmy in the steering went away. This had made me realize that I may not build Frankensprings so quickly but in but to put the geometry back to what it was by moving the front down a couple inches with the front portion of a SAS kit or build one myself and include a receiver in the front. Hopefully by doing this it will completely fix the death wobble.
