Watch The Ford F-350 Pickup ‘Death Wobble’ On Shocking Video
Something called the ‘death wobble’ plagued the Jeep Wrangler before the company tracked the issue down. It turned out it was something to do with the quality of the frame welds, amongst other things. Now, this same problem is becoming an issue in the Ford F-350 pickup truck.
Jon Cannon Morgan from Utah uploaded a video to YouTube of the phenomenon, showing just how aggressive the wobble can be on his 2018 model. Despite this evidence and a class-action lawsuit covering current and former owners of the 2005 to 2019 model years, Ford is yet to find an answer, and is definitely not shelling out any money to help these owners. Ford is adamant that these owners have just worn their control arms, ball joints, damper brackets, shocks, and/or struts. Although some customers have complained about this happening very early into ownership.
Over 1,200 current and former owners of the F-250 and 350 have complained on the NHTSA website. One says, “I was driving on the interstate at 75 mph and hit a bump and the front end started shaking uncontrollably. It wouldn’t stop until I slowed to 40 miles per hour. This has happened three times now.”
Hopefully, by drawing more attention to the issue Ford will help its customers and find a fix. Have you experienced the death wobble? Let us know your experiences in the comments.
This has been a problem since the 2005 model year when Ford changed to a radius arm mounted axle with coil springs and a track bar. The bushings has In the track bar allow a side to side oscillation to occur at the axle that is transmitted into the steering box through the drag link. As the axle oscillates against the steering, the steering causes the front wheels to violently turn left and right. The early fix was to remove caster from the front axle which is completely counterintuitive as caster aids in keeping the tire going straight. Personal experience with the death wobble prompted me to align the truck with maximum positive caster, run the maximum toe in and change tire pressures. Ford could easily fix this but they won’t until the costs Incurred from accidents and injuries exceeds the cost to re-engineer the front suspension geometry and retool all the associated parts, and retest the truck.
Because someone has to say it, “or you could have bought a real truck.” Said every Ram/GM owner.