Anyone who is running OME Dakar rear leaf spring.... Need Advise

Ok so as the title says, I need people's advise who are currently running Old Man Emu Springs in the rear of there Tacomas. Iv been running these springs for about two years now and I am having a hard time pinpointing a vibration at highway speeds. I don't know whether I have a bad tire or two or if it's due to the rear leaf springs. I can't tell because when I replaced my springs I also replaced the tires.

The problem arises when I hit highway speed. I get a constant bounce like an out of balance tire. Tires have been balanced and Road Force checked. However for them to get the tires to balance they use a good bit of weights and I still get the bounce. So I'm trying to figure out if it's the springs in the rear or just shitty tires.

I'm running BFGoodrich KO all terrain tires.

Any help would be great. It's annoying running down the road and your ads thumps down the road

 

It could be your driveline angles. This would be solved with axle shims or spacing the carrier bearing down. You can either do trial and error or with measuring.


https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/drive-shaft-vibrations-solved-step-by-step.244535/

 

shims, bearing drop installed?
Might be bad shocks not dampening whatever little vibrations there are.

 

Already running shims and also dropped the carrier bearing. It's not a high resonance vibration. Like you can see the bed bounce as if the tires are out of balance

 

Maybe one of your wheels is messed up? Only way to know for sure is to get a known good set of wheels and tires, swap them out, and see if the vibes persist.

 

Tires might be out of round. There might be a bump on a tire. Only other thing would be if there was some resistance that is making the axle 'buck' by trying to drive straight ahead.

 

Wouldn't a road force balancer detect that tho? I thought that but there like new wheels.

 

I'm not sure, as I don't know much about road force balancing.

 

Would a stiffer then stock spring cause a tire bounce? They say the OME Dakar springs are a bit stiffer. But never have I herd of a stiff spring causing a tire simulated vibration.

 

Thought this as well. But coasting in neutral down the freeway does no difference.

 

If anyone in the South central pa area has a set of 35" tires on 15" wheels and willing to let me try them out. That would be awesome.

 

A stiffer spring can cause your truck to bounce, but that's generally if 1) your shocks are shot, or 2) if you've gone with such a high spring rate to get that uber high red-neck lift that your suspension can no longer move. I see a lot of jacked up domestics with "U" shaped leafs that they might as well have just welded the axles to the frame.

A couple things to try and some questions:

How old are your shocks?
Do you notice this on a particular part of the highway you drive? Is this the same highway you always drive? Might be the road... Drive a different highway if you can.
Is the vibe speed sensitive? Does it get faster with higher speeds, or is it independent?
How old are your tires? Looking for an excuse for 33's? Might consider new tires (and don't cheap out since cheap tires are usually hard to balance and might make the problem worse).

If you haven't already, rotate your wheels (front to back) and try again. Also make sure your air pressure is good.

While I would think a road force balance *should* detect an out of round/bad tire, that's really just assuming the mechanic who did the test knows what they are doing. But even still, it could be an "out of balance" that is still within spec, but because of a combination of many other factors gets magnified while ON the vehicle at highway speeds.

 

I don't have a rediculious amount of lift. Just OME springs in the rear.

My shocks are about 2 years old as well. I'm currently running bilstien 5125 that are valved soft at 170/60 I believe. Now iv contemplated that the shocks were too soft and bought another pair of 5125's valved at 255/70 but still got the the bounce. Still if the shocks are too soft then my next step up is to a 5125 valved at 390/80 which I would expect to be too firm of a shock, but I could be wrong. I just don't want to keep throwing money at something that's not even the cause of the problem.

I just drove to OC MD and it doesn't matter what road I'm on, it bounces.

It is speed sensative. Going about 30-35 it feels like I have slightly oval wheels. Then 40 - 50 mph it levels out. Then anything above that it bounces. And gets faster as I go faster.

My tires are 3 years old. And I do remember the guy who first mounted them said "now there is a tire that took extra weight but I put that to the rear of the truck so you won't feel it". And as a matter of fact I had my tires balanced by toyota and they gave me a printout of what each tire took. One was way out and they said they were able to get it in spec and again moved it to the rear for comfort. My gut is telling me that my tires are not true.

How common is it to get one or multiple bad tires???

 

It's not common, but it's not totally unheard of either. If you're ever down in silver spring MD, we can throw my wheels and tires on your truck and see what happens

 

Try ET Lug nuts. My BFG KO2s were having trouble on the balance machine so the shop got them as close as possible and then I installed some ET lug nuts to center them better and that took away the rest of my vibes. Agree with the guys above though.. Carrier bearing drop and shims should do it as well.

 

I have those currently installed made know difference.

 

What size wheel and tire are you speaking of? Have back spacing specs?

 

Would just one bad tire cause a truck to bounce in any orientation? Back or front?

 

Hard to believe the leafs would cause what you're describing. Sounds like your wheel is asymmetrical or something.

 

They're 255/80r17 on some OEM tundra/sequoia wheels. Size shouldn't matter though, as it'll just be to see if it's your wheels/tires or your truck itself.