Braking pulls sharply to the righ and non-brake scary wobble

[laffycaffi]

I'm posting these two issues in one post, as I wonder if they are related...

Issue #1: When I brake hard, my 72 pulls sharply to the right.

Issue #2: Sometimes when I'm cruising along at about 30 mph, i get a pretty violent left-right-left wobble that's pretty hard to control. I have tried rolling it out, braking, and speeding up, but nothing really stops it. The deeper issue is more what's causing it. It doesn't happen at higher speeds, but I'm not going to say that it's not possible. And if it were to happen at a faster speed, well, that's a scary thought.

It seems that issue #2 happens more when I'm going downhill, slightly, if at all.

Any ideas are much appreciated. Thanks!

[crawlercreations]

Issue 1- disc or drum brakes up front? If its drums they need adjusted. If discs one of the calipers is likely sticking.

Issue 2- Welcome to the scary world of death wobble! Not a good feeling at all! Check your trac bar, ball joints, steering linkages, radius arms, steering gearbox, pitman arm and wheel bearings for looseness, something is worn and causing the issue.

[laffycaffi]

THANK YOU! I'll check all of that out. Yeah, horrible feeling.

Disc brakes up front. I'll check out the calipers.

[hockeydad4-22]

Death Wobble... Bad scary!!!

My 17 yr old son was driving his brothers when the track bar bracket tore off the frame doing some serious damage to the frame, fortunately there was no crash. The Death wobble was the only thing that should have warned us. We had even had it aligned 2 weeks before it happened.

I would tell you to inspect the steering and suspension thoroughly! Or else you might just get to do some of this....

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=854&p=9027&hilit=+track+bar#p9027

[Jesus_man]

Check your toe-in of the wheels too. Best to have a patient and persistent person sitting in the drivers seat rotating the steering wheel back and forth about 30 degrees while you start at the base of the column and work your way all the way thru the steering system, then thru the track bar and even the ball joints. Steering the wheel may not show you ball joint issues.

The worst part of death-wobble is it's likely several factors contributing.

Search Youtube for Bronco Death Wobble and one of the vendors posted a video.

[crawlercreations]

This article may help you track down the death wobble cause: http://www.wildhorses4x4.com/product/de ... o_Steering

[laffycaffi]

I'm bringing it in tomorrow to get it aligned. Maybe that will help. I'll also ask them to check out the track bar, etc... but I played around and couldn't find any looseness. We'll see. If I find anything, I'll send an update. If they don't find the culprit, I'll take a closer look at that article.

[laffycaffi]

Brought it in to get aligned yesterday and they went ahead and replaced the track bar bushings while they were at it. It drives SO much better now. Holy cow. And also the front brakes (a disk brake conversion I did a couple years ago) was not getting full contact because the calipers from an old Chevy was not fitting correctly. They were also nice enough to grind them down a bit for free. And now the braking is PERFECT too. I feel like I just won the lottery - my rig is driving better than ever now.

[Justin]

Glad to hear it. Track bar bushings make a huge difference. Back when I had my '73 I daily drove it. For some reason I had to replace those yearly, if only to get it to stop clunking around corners.