{"id":6003,"date":"2026-08-25T12:27:46","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T20:27:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/?p=6003"},"modified":"2026-08-28T02:56:47","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T10:56:47","slug":"still-wheely-unbalanced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/2026\/08\/25\/still-wheely-unbalanced\/","title":{"rendered":"Still Wheely Unbalanced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trying to sort out the death wobble on the Travelall is beginning to drive me nuts. Two weekends ago I swapped the front and rear wheels on the driver&#8217;s side, and on Sunday I swapped the wheels on the passenger side. Before I did this, I put cameras in each wheel well and ran the truck up to 65mph. At speeds between 50-60 the wobble appeared, but above and below that, it was fine.<\/p>\n<p>Thinking maybe I hadn&#8217;t tightened the wheel bearings enough the last time I pulled them, I tightened the castle nuts one notch and locked everything back down. A <em>third<\/em> test drive found that there wasn&#8217;t any change. At this point, I&#8217;ve got two directions to follow.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><strong>More research.<\/strong> One thing I noticed in the footage was that the tires were more offcenter than the wheels. I&#8217;m going to put cameras aimed at the edges of all the wheels next to see how stable they all are, and that will tell me a lot about what the best next step will be.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Suspension.<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ihpartsamerica.com\/store\/sl330538c91.html\">The long tie rod on the driver&#8217;s side<\/a> is still original to the truck, and is the only one I haven&#8217;t replaced yet. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ihpartsamerica.com\/store\/sl158759r1.html\">The bushings on the sway bars<\/a> are all original as well, and need to be swapped out. This could be a simple fix, but I&#8217;m not sure it&#8217;s the culprit. These parts will run about $200.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Wheels\/tires.<\/strong> I&#8217;ve been focusing on the wheels this entire time, figuring that a balance would smooth things out\u2014but these are trailer tires, which really aren&#8217;t meant for passenger vehicles (<em>I know, I know, shut up<\/em>). Actual LT215\/85R16 vehicle tires will fit on these wheels, and I can find them for as low as $145\/ea.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/domelight.png\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6006\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/domelight.png?resize=1024%2C610\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"610\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/domelight.png?resize=1024%2C610&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/domelight.png?resize=500%2C298&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/domelight.png?resize=768%2C457&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/domelight.png?w=1480&amp;ssl=1 1480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I did have a bit of success with another long-standing project: I drilled and wired a door switch into the driver&#8217;s side A-pillar and successfully connected it to a new LED dome light, which gives me a blinding amount of visibility after dark. This took a couple of attempts, where I was connecting the hot power lead to the switch like a dumbass, and after thinking about it overnight, I realized I was wiring it backwards. I tested it first and then spent an hour fishing a ground wire through the A-pillar up to the roof, successfully hiding it from view. Now I&#8217;ve got to wire the passenger side door to the same circuit, and add another LED light to the rear cargo area. I also need to test the headlight switch to see if the rheostat works correctly and triggers the light or not.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-large wp-image-6007\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png?resize=1024%2C571\" alt=\"\" width=\"1024\" height=\"571\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png?resize=1024%2C571&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png?resize=500%2C279&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png?resize=768%2C429&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png?resize=1536%2C857&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/rockercover.png?w=1647&amp;ssl=1 1647w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Another small cosmetic thing was to use a wire wheel to clean the four aluminum sill covers from the green truck, which were pretty gross, before installing the one on the driver&#8217;s sill with the remainder of my stainless screws. I&#8217;m going to put the other three in as soon as I&#8217;ve got the hardware.<\/p>\n<p>A separate unrelated search brought me to the Grote website, who were the OEM manufacturers for all of IH&#8217;s turn signal buckets and lenses back in the day. Curious, I looked at taillights and found that they offer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.grote.com\/signal-lighting\/stop-tail-turn-lights\/supernova-4-nexgen-led-stop-tail-turn-lights\/54572\/\">a 4&#8243; round LED taillight<\/a> that looks remarkably similar to the lights on Darth and the 800. If these are the same size, I <em>think<\/em> I could simply pull the taillights out of Darth and swap these in without needing to add a resistor or any other electrical trickery to get them to work. <em>Update:<\/em> My taillights are 6&#8243; wide, so my dreams of a sealed LED have been dashed for now.<\/p>\n<p>I also found a different vendor who sells <a href=\"https:\/\/www.texasfabricsandfoam.com\/silver-lining-light-graphite-2075-foam-backed-headliner-fabric\/?srsltid=AfmBOoo6M-OGErcWhOCdSLREjYv7j_qNUVW1sxLt-aSGwcCvY9d9ojwF\">headliner fabric for \u00a0$17\/yd<\/a>, but it&#8217;s not the pegboard-style stuff that came in the truck. I still haven&#8217;t been able to find a flexible but stiff-enough board to use to replace the original perforated chipboard. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sailrite.com\/EverSoft-Smooth-White-54-Perforated-Foam-Backed-Headliner?option__custitem_yards=2&amp;quantity=1\">There is perforated fabric<\/a> I can spray mount over hard backer board, but it&#8217;s 3X the price. What I may have to do is beg or borrow something that will emit steam so that I can heat and bend 1\/8&#8243; chipboard into the shapes that I need.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trying to sort out the death wobble on the Travelall is beginning to drive me nuts. Two weekends ago I swapped the front and rear wheels on the driver&#8217;s side, and on Sunday I swapped the wheels on the passenger side. Before I did this, I put cameras in each wheel well and ran the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[70,56,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-electrical","category-to-do-list","category-travelall"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58Ac2-1yP","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6003"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6010,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6003\/revisions\/6010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.billdugan.com\/scout\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}