My Death Wobble Experience

[CHIRP]

I searched TDR once I experienced DW. I new about it and when it happened to me. . this is what I did:



I checked ball joints, tie rods, track bar, steering stabilizer(s). All good. Steering box seems fine. I was running a set of worn 315 70 15 BFG's. They were just over 1/16, so it was time. After what I read here and talking with local experts, I replaced the Tires today with Big O Tires "Bigfoot AT" LT315/70R17/D/D 121 R. Test drove the road that caused most of the wobble.



Death wobble is gone. Seems like a good tire.



BTW- the wobble happened at 70 MPH just as a bump in the road was hit, especially when daytime temps where above 90 degrees. Nasty!

 

[BHanna]

I had same problem with the BFGs at about 35K miles with lots of tread left on them. Your new tires look like they're also D load rated (just like the BFGs). They may be better but they may give you the same problem after a while.

 

[TimothyLong]

Hmmmm, that's interesting. I've run BFG AT's for a long time and never had any experiences that I would consider DW. Got 56K out of the last set and they were running pretty well. Now, I have had some bad vibration with them from time to time at 65 - 70 mph, but that was always a balance issue. Just like oil changes, I have my tires religiously balanced and rotated every 6K miles and my truck runs really smooth. It's not until I pinch a curb that I start to feel vibration. I'm not talking smacking a curb, but just pinching it with a tire while parking. I have noticed that on the BFG's and the Goodyear Silent Armors I currently have, pinching curbs tends to knock the balance out causing a vibration. Hitting bumps seemed to exaggerate the vibration. But it was always corrected the next time I had my tires balanced and rotated. Another thing that I have noticed with the BFG's is that tire pressure matters when balancing the tires. With the BFG's I noticed that as long as the running tire pressure was within about 3 lbs or so of the tire pressure at the time they were balanced, they ran fine. If I altered the tire pressure one way or another after balancing, I got some vibration until the tires were balanced again. BTW, I ran 285's on stock rims at 65 psi.

Another thing that I noted with CHIRP is the tire size. Your sig doesn't say if you are running stock rims or not, but if you are 315's are too big 8. 5" stock rims. This is per BFG Tech Support. Their claim is that any tire bigger than 285's on the Dodge stock 8. 5" rims causes added stress to the sidewalls because they are pinched too much AND it voids the manufacturer tire warranty. This may have contributed to your DW experience. BHanna, I notice that you are running 10" rims with 315's and that's fine. Can't say what might have happened in your case. As a side note on the Silent Armors I am currently running, I have noticed that tire pressure and fuel economy are related. The Silent Armors do not like to run at high pressures and give good fuel economy. As i said, I always ran my BFG's at 65 psi and they performed very well. The only thing I noticed about running at higher pressures around 70 psi or so was that the GFG's didn't grip as well. That's to be expected when running empty and/or not towing. The Silent Armors, per Goodyear, are 65 max psi tires. I have noticed that running empty, the higher tire pressures are bad for fuel economy. At 60 mph, the Silent Armors, at least in my experience, seem to give the best fuel economy when inflated to 55 - 60 psi running empty. I have mine set so that they run at 60 psi when they are hot. When they are cool, they are are at about 57 psi or so. So yeah, Obama was right, proper tire pressure does save fuel.

Anyway, just some food for thought. I have always found the BFG's to be a good, reliable tire. I only switched to the Silent Armors because I have heard good things about them and wanted to try them out for myself. Sorry that you guys had bad experiences with the BFG's!

 

[pullya]

If you read the pages and pages of information about DW you will find that there are about as many causes as there are cures. What will make your truck have DW may not affect my truck at all or visa versa. More than one person has reported that when they changed their BFG 315 tires to a different brand their DW stopped. Is this proof that the tires causes DW maybe for those people but there are also plenty of people running those tires that have never had a problem. In all my research of DW I have never found ONE specific thing that has been a common thread in all the cases of DW I've read about. Good luck and I hope you never experience it again---it's really scary and dangerous.

Jay

 

[Regcabguy]

The Dodge stock rims are 17" x 8".

 

[BKWelliver]

every time I got the dreaded DW it was when I had BFG's mounted on. I will never run them ever again. I have not had the DW since I went to the Nitto Terragrapplers.

 

[TimothyLong]

The Dodge stock rims are 17" x 8".

Yes, you are correct. The 8. 5" rims are the smallest rim width that 17" 305 or 315 BFG's are recommended for. I also cited BHanna's rims as 10" when his sig says 8. 5" rims. I was pretty tired when I drafted that response. Thanks for the correction and sorry for the confusion!

 

[BHanna]

Timothy Long - you were right. I just hadn't updated my sig and your reply prompted me to do it. I took the 17x10s off because they only had 4. 5" offset and I was going through ball joints at a rate that made me think something closer to factory offset would help. That's why I went to a 17x8. 5 with 6" offset. The ball joints could have contributed to the DW but when I had the BFG's new ball joints didn't fix it.

 

[TimothyLong]

Timothy Long - you were right. I just hadn't updated my sig and your reply prompted me to do it. I took the 17x10s off because they only had 4. 5" offset and I was going through ball joints at a rate that made me think something closer to factory offset would help. That's why I went to a 17x8. 5 with 6" offset. The ball joints could have contributed to the DW but when I had the BFG's new ball joints didn't fix it.

So I'm not going totally crazy after all! Thanks for the update! As pullya stated in his post, I have seen a lot of different causes for DW posted in various threads, but most of the ones that I've read about have been due to the wonderfully substandard factory ball joints and/or steering box. But that still doesn't rule out other causes like tires. My experiecne with BFG's has been realy good while others have had problems. So you can't totally discount that either as a DW cause.

 

[BHanna]

The ball joints are pretty bad but I'm hoping to get a little more life from them with the new wheels. If that doesn't work. I'm thinking about cutting off the ends of my axles and welding on some of these spidertrax knuckles. 3-1/2" Housing Ends

 

[ddivinia]

I got 60K miles out of a set of BFG AT. With the new set - I got the death wobble. Ends up 1 of the tires was pretty out of balance and they replaced it. I insisted on them doing the road force balance and all has been good for now. I am running 315s on stock rims on my 2005.

D.

 

[CHIRP]

I had same problem with the BFGs at about 35K miles with lots of tread left on them. Your new tires look like they're also D load rated (just like the BFGs). They may be better but they may give you the same problem after a while.

Your right, they may give me the same trouble. If they do, I will likely go with a smaller E rated tire or larger rim.

 

[CHIRP]

For the record, I did not diligently rotate the tires. I will now. The BFG's where on stock rims as are the new. I tow a 5th wheel coming in at around 8,900 lbs a few times a year for a couple hours each way on mountain roads. 315's are not ideal for towing, but tow fine none the less. The DW happened just after the tires were rotated. When I had the BFG's balanced, balancing was difficult. The tires were rebalanced in an effort to rectify DW to no avail. I wonder if something about the roads I drive on causes the tires to wear out of round? Or, maybe upon rebalancing and rotating the tires, a defect, caused by driving or during manufacturing, in the sidewall or belt was amplified. I was happy with how the BFG's handled up to this point. They were nice. I am starting to think that something about the towing and my driving causes uneven and out of round wear. In my case, DW was due to the tires, but I can't say I had bad tires. Only time will tell. . I guess. I bought the Big O's due to price and the warranty was impossible to beat. I like the Big O's. Otherwise, in all likely hood, I would have bought BFG's again. Edit: I got over 40k on the BFG's.

 

[BHanna]

I went with the Toyo M/T's to get the E-rating and you can get them in 35" - about the same as the 315s. I wish there were good options in an A/T tire with an E-rating.

 

[RAMINSPEED]

I've experienced DW 3 times so far. On all 4 occasions I had the factory tires on the factory rims and was driving 70+ mph when I hit a bump on the hwy. Yes, it’s scary and boy do you get some strange looks from others that see it happen. I’m sure it’s a combination of tire balance and worn suspension parts. I just haven’t taken the time to chase it down.

 

[TimothyLong]

For the record, I did not diligently rotate the tires. I will now. The BFG's where on stock rims as are the new. I tow a 5th wheel coming in at around 8,900 lbs a few times a year for a couple hours each way on mountain roads. 315's are not ideal for towing, but tow fine none the less. The DW happened just after the tires were rotated. When I had the BFG's balanced, balancing was difficult. The tires were rebalanced in an effort to rectify DW to no avail. I wonder if something about the roads I drive on causes the tires to wear out of round? Or, maybe upon rebalancing and rotating the tires, a defect, caused by driving or during manufacturing, in the sidewall or belt was amplified. I was happy with how the BFG's handled up to this point. They were nice. I am starting to think that something about the towing and my driving causes uneven and out of round wear. In my case, DW was due to the tires, but I can't say I had bad tires. Only time will tell. . I guess. I bought the Big O's due to price and the warranty was impossible to beat. I like the Big O's. Otherwise, in all likely hood, I would have bought BFG's again. Edit: I got over 40k on the BFG's.

I'm thinking that a D rated tire should handle the 8900 lbs okay. Having the 315's on the stock 8" rim probably pinched the sidewalls (like BFG warned me about) and may have weakened them over time causing the balance problems. Another thing that may have contributed is improper inflation when you were towing. If you had them pressured at about 70 psi or so, that should have been okay. I hope you have a better experience with the BFGs if you ever decide to go back to them!