What is causing my poor handling? SEE PHOTOS

I have an 05 dcsb 4x4 with ome 887s and JBA UCA'S on 285 nitto trail grapplers.

I think the truck rides great except I get bumpsteer and the truck likes to follow the contour of the road. I often get what I would describe as a shimmy in the steering wheel when traveling over roads that aren't perfectly flat and smooth. The truck rides great on freshly paved smooth roads.

My caster is around 1.8

Are these characteristics due to the caster number, the aggressive tires, or something else?


UPDATE:

Noticed that the rear-most eccentric washers on the LCA's look wacky, is this correct?

Drivers side:


Passenger side:

 

how old are your tires? Tires can start causing these problems over time due to uneven wear from over inflating, under inflating, out of alignment, among other conditions.

 

Year old with 10000 miles. Truck has handled like this since the lift and tires were installed new. All even wear.

 

Sounds like a tire issue to me, those are some heavy tires. Light trucks don't get along well with heavy tires.

 

I'm not an expert, but for 285s and a lift, your caster should be more between 2.5 and 3. It definitely cured my bumpsteer and wandering.

Edit: I'm running 265's - but my caster is at 3.

 

My opinion is that it is a mixture of both, but I wanted to hear what others had to say.

 

Needs more caster most likely

 

More than likely a combination of needing more caster and bad tires. I had 265 Nittos, LR uppers, 885's, Billies and good caster numbers and had bad bump steer. Swapped out the Nitto tires and got rid of 80% of the bump steer. Still some...but much better. Wont buy them again.

 

needs more caster

 

added photos of LCA eccentric washers

 

Bump. Is the LCA washer upside down?

 

Needs more caster and I would check the intermediate steering shaft for play.

 

The alignment cam is definitely upside down. The marking should face up though I'm not sure what difference it would make.

 

You have an alignment issue; Need more caster 2.4+ on each side_ I had the exact same problem and I'm on 265's_ My first alignment the tech set caster too low and it made me wander all over the road, I went back and told the tech the problem and asked if he could put my caster to 2.4-3.0 if possible. He finallly clocked it in at 2.4 something left side and 2.5 something right side. Now no more wandering and drives great.

We have really bad ruts in the roads here and so far I don't even notice them that much. Get an alignment done with someone who's willing to work with what you want; most techs set it in the green and call it good, you don't want that; you want them to get as close to your own spec as possible.