The problem with swapping steering your factory stabilizer for a less stiff design is that you dramatically increase the likelihood of an uncontrolled front steering system oscillation. You may never experience this problem but people are reporting exactly this issue after swapping stabilizers.
If you’ve never experienced the issue you are fortunate and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.
Well I have on the Grenadier. Maybe not 100% what you’re speaking of, but most certainly Death Wobble. The real Death Wobble, not just some concerning shaking.
In stock form I found that removing the steering stabilizer all together made things tolerable for me. Truck drove fine and never really had an issue. My plan was to put on a lighter stabilizer at some point but I hadn’t got there yet. I did have the caster properly set by Grenadier Sewell.
Now, I added the leveling/lift springs from Eibach. Pretty simple right. Truck was OK but it certainly behaved a bit differently as one would expect. Within a day or so I had my Owl Wheels and some 315/70R17’s installed. Generally the truck drove well and I was pleased enough with it. But a day before I set off on a trip from Dallas to Colorado Springs I hit a bump on the highway at about 75mph that put the truck into a 100% uncontrolled death wobble. I barely got the truck stopped before I hit the wall in the up coming turn. I limped home and immediately put the stock stabilizer back on. The increased track width, tires and lift combined certainly caused some issues that needed to be resolved. I went on the trip to Colo Springs and all was ok but the steering wasn’t great and there were some issues associated with emergency braking etc that I wanted to correct.
My hope was that the Fox ATS adjustable stabilizer would solve my issues. And it certainly solved a ton of them. Ultimately adding the Kings made the truck behave close enough to my expectations son I am happy now.
That said, for the most part a stabilizer is a stabilizer a stabilizer. Meaning there is no magic to the Grenadiers stock stabilizer that pretty much every other stabilizer in the world has. The differences could be installer defects, mounting method and level of dampening.
The original method used on the FOX stabilizer was cobbled together and sold prematurely to fix a glaring issue people had. Ultimately it worked ok but was an installation compromise. Both Owl and I think Agile have addressed this with a new less compromised brackets. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still not ideal but it gets the job done much better.
As well, there are two FOX stabilizers at least. One is ashy and the other is not. I cannot speak to the dampening of the non adjustable version as it may be too soft or hard.
So to get back on track, I am very aware some people have had issues with the FOX setup. And I have to assume their experience is just as valid as mine. The only problem is I cannot speak to the diagnostic completed if any by the installer of the units that people took issue with. Most have no skin in the game and are just billing shop hours to swap parts I suspect. But the reality is that the FOX stabilizer is capable of performing as well or better than the stock part and should not have been the root issue. It’s possible these people got a defective stabilizer, a poorly adjusted stabilizer or the part was installed incorrectly. I just don't know, but the problem is not inherent to swapping a stabilizer is all I am saying.