I have a 1991 F250 2wd truck. The truck has 50K miles on it and our family is the orginal owner. The truck wasn't driven for a couple of years and it's now a farm truck. I have a extremely bad bounce/vibration/shake coming from the front end. It only starts doing this after driving for 15 minutes or so. I can drive to town and it drives fine, however on the way back it starts shaking badly and can't drive about 30 mph. I checked the wheel bearings a while back and they looked ok. Anyone ever had this type of problem? I'm thinking about just replacing the wheel bearings to start, however I don't want to get into a habit of just replacing things and hoping it works.

 

are you feeling it in the steering wheel? or is the whole front of the truck shaking? cant drive above 30mph as in- it wont go over 30mph or it gets real bad over 30? is it worst while accelerating vs. cruising?

 

Jack up 1 at a time & spin the fron tires by hand while watching from the side - does the tread appear to stay in place, or is there an obvious dip/bulge?

Grip the tire at 3:00 & 9:00 - is there any looseness swivelling the tire side-to-side? How about at 12:00 & 6:00 swivelling up&down? Try to find the source by noting the components that move & those that don't.

With the truck parked on a flat surface, if you jounce the suspension (jump off the bumper), how many cycles does it make before completely stopping? Is there any sign of oil from the shocks?

Do the radius arm bushings look OK?

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bad tires, If it sat for a long enough time, maybe the tires try and seperate or come appart after thw get hot from driving it.

 

I jacked up the front end, couldn't get any movement out of the front hub assembly at all. The shock tubes are dry and the shocks rebound like a good set should. The tires are new and this problem happened with the old set as well. Today I ended up replacing the bearings, hub/rotors, brake pads, calipers (busted boots), and brake lines (rotted). I didn't get a chance to test drive it yet, so hopefully all of that will solve the problem. I didn't get a chance to look at at the control arm bushings. The ball joints looked like they were in good shape, the tie rod ends looked in good shape as well. The left side bearings were a little dry so hopefully that might have been the issue.


Forgot to answer matt's ford's question. The front end bounces. The whole truck bucks up and down from the front end or so it feels like. I would have thought a bad shock at first but it only happens when it's been driving 15 minutes or so (drive to town and starts on the way back).

 

None of the things you listed could cause that much bucking. Bearings that are "a little dry" might cause a slight noise, but they won't shake the truck.

Check the U-joints.

 

Well so far out of the few times we have driven it, it runs great now. It's stopped bucking. Hopefully it stays that way.