Got myself a great little deuce that I'm working on. Just looking for some suggestions. This girl has a little bit of a shake to the steering wheel at low speeds. It has a Pete & Jakes dropped axel, with a vega steering box. I've checked and had the tires balanced, front end alignment checked, new king pins and bushings, tightened steering box, new lower steering column bearing, checked every nut and bolt and bushings. Still has a little shake to it. This can't be typical for this kind of suspension. Anyone have this kind of trouble? Any thoughts?
What kind of wheels? A bent wheel maybe? Can you swap front to rear to test it? Someone will eventually come on here and say use a steering damper so I might as well get it out of the way. I leave that choice up to you though as there are fans on both sides of that argument.
Radials or bias? Is there a panhard bar or a dead perch? Is there a steering dampner? What's the toe-in?
Tires are almost new. Radials. It acts like tires, nor wobble or out of round. Wheels straight. Has pan hard bar but no damper. Toe-in is ⅛" total. Maybe damper is the answer. Different sizes front to back, might be tough to swap.
What's the caster set at? Cheat it down a wee bit and see if that helps? Common wisdom seems about 6 degrees, but I run a granny-steer 4 degrees on a 32 chassis and it doesn't wander or bounce..
If you could get a hold of another set of wheels and tires to put on and try it would tell you if that was the problem. I've had radial tires with a broken belt that acted like that.
toe in...steering box,...tighten u bolts on ft. spring....turn rotors / true drums...steering linkage...tighten perch nuts....good luck
What the condition of the steering box any slop ? So when you turn the steering wheel any play in the front end components?
Photo of your front end showing spring,shock,shackles,rim off set n tire,would help others make ideas 4 U.
You mentioned you checked every nut and bolt. Did you get the front end off the ground. Grab the tire at the top and bottom and see what moves? Grab at 9 o'clock and 3 also.
Yes to having this trouble - - - me, for the last couple of years, After much checking, tightening switching wheels/tires, etc think it's finally solved. Yep, wheels and tires! All the wheels I've ever had on the car were steel aftermarket, a couple of which turned out to be "bent" but nothing seemed to work. Recently tried on a set of aluminum wheel/tire combos a friend pulled off and it went down the road great! So - - - A new set of quality tires on my most recent steel wheels and a very good balance job by an experienced tire expert and it's fine. I've come to the conclusion that just because the guy says "they're all balanced" doesn't always mean they're balanced WELL. Just my experience for what it's worth.
Wheels may be balanced, but how good is the brake drum balance if it is a drum set up. I put new (Chinese) drums on and found that balance was way off. Spin the drum without the wheel a few times to see if stopping point is random. I had to remove a lot of metal to get close to balance.
That is rather normal with straight front axles if not have panhard or steering shock. Ackerman steering is change if not original axle, spring, steering arms..... I have had that problem with my grey 1932 5w coupe (5" dropaxle, A-ford front support, mono leaf, 40 spindles). I changed little higher front tires, warmed and turned steering arms little more to car centerline. After that no shaking anymore. I had same problem with olive green roadster. Original heavy axle, original steerinbox,... I just had 40s sspindles/steeringarms, drop spring.... and shaking sometimes when low speed and bowls on road. Never solved problem. didnt want to install panhard or steering damper. Other 1932 fords no shaking even have same kind of parts used..... I think, You can check ackerman steering and measure it. You can also check that You have good tie rod ends and steeringbox. No extra backlash or just increase panhard or steering damper Aulis
The best balance ever was a friend who had a brake shop and used the old type of spin balancer on his pro street car for drag racing. I had a '88 Olds wagon that no matter what I did, it still shook, we found the two front and left rear wheel's bad. It was cool how he did it. Once the balancer was on the wheel, he spun it till the hood shook then he made the adjustment by looking across the hood, when it stopped shaking, bingo, smoot as a lake. He even after took it to 120mph. The big Olds never shook again. His reasoning, static balancers are for the wheel and tires, but the spin finds any problem in the whole wheel system. It could be a drum, brake, axel, and I wasn't going to dispute a guy who takes a car 150 mph down the strip every Sunday. The only goof I made was not buying the spinner when he sold out the shop. You probably can find them, but it takes some training to use it. I'm going to run it past my rod buddies and all chip in and buy one for the club. Another amazing thing that happened was on my '32 5 window with new Cooker's bias ply whites. I felt the back tires shaking, jacked it up and the rear left had a wobble up and down, I knew the wheel from a late model Ford were perfect.so, I called Cooker and she said rotate your wheels around two lugs, I paused and almost laughed. I did what she said and alas, no wobble! And to think we didn't think women knew about rods! Try it. One more story my buddy with a '49 Merc with a wobbly front end on new Cookers, we pulled them, brought them to a tire shop, mounted them on the static machine and spun them by hand, wow they looked like foot balls. A call to Cookers and Corky had them to him in a few days. Several years later my new '32 roadster had the same problem, again Corky was great. Tires can come out of the mold unround. Hope all this gab helps, the '32 comes out of storage tomorrow!
One issue that always gets missed is sloppy perch bolts in the axle or flogged out axle bores, this allows the axle to rock and steers one side on bumps of any size and mostly on the drag link side....when bad enough you get Death Wobble. JW
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