Final Thoughts On Death Wobble:
“Death wobble” is bad enough and common enough that it merits a recall. Everyone who owns a new(ish) car gets occasional recall notices about dumb little crap. Maybe some doofus in New Jersey managed to start a fire after dousing the seat with Sterno and stuffing a grapefruit in a left handed electric door switch; subsequently they called a lawyer on speed dial and now Suzuki is putting a new little $5 wingding on twenty thousand puddle jumpers and cutting a big ass check to a class action lawyer. That’s stupid.
Sudden catastrophic violent shaking and loss of control of a big rig at highway speed with no warning is a whole different animal. It’s a known issue. It’s not safe. Everyone has heard of it. It happened on a well maintained truck with no warning. Shit like that is the whole point of a recall. Congress dry humped Toyota over bullshit while I was rolling around on four tons of iron that might lose control due to a common and known flaw?
I call foul! I had my reservations about owning anything associated with a government owned company and this is why.
Shocked by death wobble I also pondered my choice in hefty trucks. Probably due to politics as much as anything there are only the “big three” in America. I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no solution:
- Chevys suck more than Fords.
- Fords suck more than Dodges.
- Dodges suck more than Chevys.
- Enjoy the circular firing squad of suck.
After my little list I sense many hands poised over keyboards to emote over their favorite vehicle. “I bought a ’69 Ford and ran it a zillion miles with no maintenance… also I’m handsome and rich.” Yeah yeah yeah. Obviously every population of vehicles has a group of pure awesome shining brightly in the upper distribution two standard deviations past the mean. Maybe you won the lottery. So what? I’ll also admit modern trucks are better than previous models in terms of performance. Which is good news but doesn’t impress me when a solid modern truck suddenly fails at steering. Also, and this is the most damning of it all, my truck is hardly a lemon, it appears to require about average levels of maintenance for the work I put it to. I’m not unlucky, I’m just stuck buying from companies that are “too big to fail”.
One last gripe. There are trucks that clearly have the solution. Steering is not rocket science. There’s probably something which is not from the craptacular big three that’s an unpolished gem I’ve overlooked. But that’s the issue. I can’t go there. I’m talking trucks just under semi-tractor weight capacity, in America, that’s commonly available right now, and is neither customized, old, or fussy. If you love your Toyota just shut the hell up. If you built something out of a van and six tanks I don’t want to hear it. I wanted 4×4 too much to upgrade to a used class 8 and I carry stuff that’ll make an F-150 squat like a constipated turnip. This locked me into the big three one ton trucks.
Speaking of smaller trucks, I’m still bitter that the plucky little Mahindra was EPA’d into the ground. I needed big so I was still stuck with big three but I’d have bought a Mahindra the day I could get one. Dropping cash on a freakin’ front end “known issues” just rubs salt in my wounds.
Now if you’ll excuse me I’ve got to drive to Detroit, find the loser who perpetuated this mess, and set their mailbox on fire.