Steering Wheel Shake / Tire Wear on 06' Pete 387
 

I've been having an issue with irregular tire wear and mild steering wheel shake. The right steer is wearing on the inside shoulder in a few random places after only 20k miles. The shaking isn't dependant on speed and the issue isn't balancing (I run Centramatics and Tru-balance wheel centering sleeves) and it is somewhat intermittent. It seems that it's worse when I begin driving and then after a half hour or so it diminishes, although sometimes it sporadically returns. Also, when the steering wheel shakes, it seems to vibrate the right fender / hood area as I can see the hood mounted mirror shake when it's at its worst. Alignment was done at a competent shop and then checked and validated by another reputable place a few thousand miles later. The problem isn't shocks, as I run Road King shocks on all three axles. The truck has 910k miles and is on all original parts. I had thought that it might be kingpins, but the local Cummins dealer checked and said they thought everything looked okay. Anyone wanna take a wild guess on this? Could it be bearings? Steering components are one of my weakest areas as far as mechanical issues go, so any advice is welcome. I do know that with 910k miles on all original parts that everything could be on the verge of going out. Anybody competent enough to do the work is welcome to come stay in our guest room and do the work for $30 / hour cash and I'll supply the parts, beer, food and go-fer help, and we can rebuild the whole front end. Oh, and if you like to hunt, our county is known as some of the best deer hunting anywhere. See pic of my back property below ======>

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have had that problem and tyre service put wheel back on balancer and found tyre was slightly out of shape ,they spun it and you could see out of round [when it spun they held tyre lever near tread and there be good 1/4 inch difference ]new tyre and no problems.that was after wheel alignment was done first

Yeah, i'd have to agree with that, sounds like a defective tire.

So far I've had four or five tires in that position, results are always the same, although the Bridgestones wore a little worse than my Yokohama's that I normally run.

i have the same exact problem. its getting really annoying to say the least. ate up my toyo m147's with in 40k. currently eating up my chinese tires (kinda happy because i hate them) now. i'm getting an alignment and new shocks to see if that does it. though, at 45 the wheel has a nasty shake.

Well, it's rules out the tire on 99.9%. I know you've said about Road kings, but still could be a problem, and i'd check wheel bearings too.

It is definitely annoying. I do my own tire work and I run 10 all-position Yokohama 16 Ply RY023's (and I love them, btw... I highly recommend), so I just rotate them out. I only leave steers on for 50k or so anyway and then set them aside to become drive tires when the need arises. About the time I have six used steers and a set getting ready to come off, my drives are about ready to be replaced. It works out real well and I always have a nice new set of steers up front. What I've been doing to compensate for the abnormal wear is dismount and flip the right steer when it starts to show wear (usually about 20k is seems these days), then when it starts wearing again on the inside, I remove it, bring the left steer over to the right side and put a new steer on the left side. It's extra work, but I'm pretty quick at tire changing and can do two in about 30 minutes.

I wasn't sure until recently whether or not I was going to keep this truck much longer and so didn't want to dump money into it, but I'm fairly certain I'm going to in-frame it when the time comes (910k and the oil samples look as good as the day I bought it with 172k on it). Now that I'm sure I'm keeping it, I'd like to fix the problem, but I don't want to pay $100 an hour to have stuff replaced that doesn't need replacing, and we all know that's what will most likely happen if I take it to Peterbilt or Cummins. I'm thinking about having the whole front end rebuilt if I can find a competent mechanic who wants to do it in my shop for cash. Also, there's a guy who has a repair shop in Vandalia, IL who also runs his own small fleet of grain trucks who seems very good (seems honest anyway) and only charges $60 an hour. I might give him a call, but he's 100 miles away from me.

Worst case scenario, I can just keep dealing with the problem until it gets worse and can be easily diagnosed.

I've thought about pulling the shocks off and putting stock ones on for one trip out to see if that makes a difference. The Road Kings do have some miles on them and could have gone bad, but my last set were still good after 600k miles. I may try shocks when I get home, since they are so cheap and easy to replace. I know bearings are easy to replace, but I've never done them. The shop across the street from my house will do them and charge $80 an hour. They're mostly an automotive place, but are good with truck alignments and are do a fair amount of truck "parts swapping" as I call it. Their response when I asked about kingpins was, "Well, it's been awhile since we've done any." That's all I needed to hear on that subject. It's gonna be a lot longer before they ever do mine.

Had the exact same problem on my 2006 379 a couple of years back. Every shop that checked it out said everything was fine and they were as baffled as I was. I changed tires (including brands), shocks, had alignments....nothing helped. Finally decided enough was enough and had yet another Peterbilt shop take a look. Turned out IT WAS the King Pin on the right side, had both changed and problem went away :D

Looking to this topic was meaningless for me... but I am enjoying being here.