If you happen to get a vehicle that has steering wobble Please I beg of you DO NOT blame the steering damper straight off....

The steering dampers job is to smooth out the steering and slow down any sudden deviations caused by the wheel running into something, not to take care of faults in the vehicle that make the steering shake, wobble, shimmy, jimmy, shudder or any other number of words that get used to describe that sort of behaviour...

IF your steering is setup correctly other than minor jolts from the surface of the road the steering should be nice and smooth (not so much if your driving on corrugations). If you replace the steering damper and the problem goes away then you are more than likely just treating a symptom rather than fixing the cause.

Before you go blaming the poor overworked steering damper chassis lift the vehicle and pry the wheels to check for bearing slack or slack in the swivel pins. if you find nothing there take to all the bushes for the suspension and give them a play check and inspect for cracks or perishing. 90% of the time something here will be at fault, dont forget the panhard rod and sway bar bushes.

If that reveals nothing go ahead and remove the steering dampner and inspect the bushes, if they are polished and flogged take the vehicle for a drive without the dampner fitted if the problem gets worse then the steering dampner isnt the cause, check the smootheness of the operation of the dampner by running it through the same priming technique you'd use before fitting a new shocky and if thats all good fit it up with new bushes and see how it goes while you drive down to the tyre shop (pick a good one) and have the tyres balanced, steering alignement checked your probabley due for a rotation as well so get that done too. if theres anything odd in the steering geometry or the wear patterns strange on the front the shop should be able to point out the likely cause.

once youve had that done remove the steering damper and see if the problem is gone properly by taking another test drive.

Blaming the dampner for steering shudder and replacing it might work but its got the potential to be epensive partly because the root cause is still there and will be shortening the life of the dampner but more because the root cause is still there and is likely to be getting worse.