Wadmancpu

Hello all! I recently bought an 03' F-150 Heritage Edition, rear wheel drive, 5.4L. I just had new tires put on and then rebalanced because I thought that may be my problem. No luck. While driving in the range of 55 to 65mph the steering wheel sometimes shakes, sometimes not. It comes and goes. Ive checked everything in the front end and its all tight. I had to replace the front wheel bearings, left front caliper, and left front brake hose for other reasons and it did not effect it. It feels just like a badly out of balance tire but that's been ruled out and like I said, it doesn't always do it. The only thing I see wrong is a badly wore out sway bar bushing on the passenger side with a bent up hold down bracket on it. It's actually cracked badly so I'll be heading to the salvage yard tomorrow. My tire place says the wheels aren't bent. If they were bent or out of balance I can't see it being an intermittent problem. It's a shake at 55-65 and sometimes smooth as glass. I'm wondering if the sway bar issue is causing the shake under certain road conditions/angles/contours? Is this possible? Any other ideas? Thanks!

03f15012

I had a tire balance issue that only showed up at around 75-80 mph a while ago. I got a new set of wheels and tires that were mounted and balanced,, and now its smooth as silk. It may seem unlikely, but it never hurts to try.

Wadmancpu

I just can't see it happening at 65mph and sometimes not. Doesn't make sense to me. A shake from an out of balance tire showing up at 65mph is going to continuously show at 65mph. Has to be something about the road conditions effecting a part in the steering. i just don't know what.

03f15012

You make a good point. Though honestly, there isn't a lot left to go to. If the bushing fix doesn't work, then there's not a lot left to go to. Its all about eliminating the possibilities until its fixed.

w0lvez

I almost have the same issue before. I almost tried all balancing and aligning but none of them was able to fix it. Until I notice the Cab Mount near the Radiator drain looks bad. The cab mount is the huge bushing with bolts holding the cab in the chassis.

charliedyal

Check the idler arm. If you can move the steering link its attached to up & down any at all it may be flexing enough to cause that problem. The link flexes and the tire rods are pushed and pulled causing a shake in the front end. The more worn it gets, the worse the shaking gets. Not saying that its definitely your problem, but I've had the same issue pop up on my 97 &2000 4x4s. Hope this helps.

w0lvez

03 has a recall on Pitman arm nut which was not fully tighten to the required specification of 275Nm (203 lb-ft).

Krack499

iTrader: (1)

My car had a bad tie rod I just replaced and the wheel would shake above 55 it started off doing it occasionally but did it more often the worse it wore out