Thread: Could a dead shock cause vibration?

yep, sure can.
I had a bad vibration, just like a wheel out of balance, but the tyre bloke reckoned it was minimal, re-balanced anyway when I decided to check the front Koni's. Drivers front dead. Rebound stack nut came loose
Re-built shock, then OK.

and FWIW, Billies do go off slowly, as well as having a valve or seal (noticeable !) failure.

Fast check, look at tyre wear. A worn shocker will allow the wheel to oscilate, especially on coil sprung vehicles.A coil spring starts to oscilate up and down the coils length, in a way a leaf spring can't. This can be very rapid and feel like tailshaft vibration. This will wear the tyre in a saw tooth pattern on the outside edges.
It happens a lot on motorcycles with telescopic front ends. One shocker leg wears more than the other and the whole wheel actually moves of centre during travel and scrubs the tread edge to a wavey saw tooth. Same same on 4 wheel vehicle, especially solid axles, where the movement of one wheel does affect the other. Look at some of the extreme articulation photo's, as the right wheel goes up, it also tips the top in towards the body, the left wheel tucks its bottom edge in under the chassis. In normal road use this is far less pronounced, but, it is there none the less. Even more so with one side uncontrolled by its shock absorber.
I would rebuild or replace both shock absorbers. They work in unison, as a pair. One partly worn, one rebuilt or replaced, you are only giving yourself the same problem mirrored to the other side of the vehicle.

A word of warning on shockers, Learn to hate Munroe Wiley Sensatracs. I did an emergency quality control job for MW in Adelaide during the development of the Sensatrac. It is garbage. Absolute garbage.

Shorty.

Yep, had this on the S1 Disco. Doubly bad because the shocker bushes were completely shredded on the front end (lowers) - this means a small interval where there is no damping, bad or otherwise. Drove horribly on the highway.

Cheers

Owen.

had a similar problem, found it to be the front shocks, only after trying everything else and by accident too !!