death wobble v2.0

[TerryD]

yeah, the loose steering and trackbar not bolted to the frame drove pretty good, when he put a good steering on it, the loose trackbar showed its self

[Arya Ebrahimi]

I will also vouch for the fact that two wrongs do make a right in this case.

My old XJ went through the same thing. No death wobble with shot TRE's and shot trackbar bushings. Death wobble with new trackbar bushings and shot TRE's. No death wobble with fresh bushings and TRE's.

Cody, did you figure anything out yesterday?

Ary

[jonesy]

I will also vouch for the fact that two wrongs do make a right in this case.

My old XJ went through the same thing. No death wobble with shot TRE's and shot trackbar bushings. Death wobble with new trackbar bushings and shot TRE's. No death wobble with fresh bushings and TRE's.

Cody, did you figure anything out yesterday?

Ary

nope .... a couple of people came over to help and we got the steering switched to correc the angle and got the steering box switched out with a Durango / Dakota 4wd box .... gonna have to do some major alignment on the draglink though .... then it got too cold and started snowing, so we quit .... if i get motivated enough to brave the cold and snow, i might go out today and see if i can get the alingment, and the intake done so i can at least test drive it ... and if that fails, then Tdawg will be selling me 4 of the stiffest steering stabilizers Advance sells

[Steinberg]

for what it's worth, a snippet I pulled from another site, kinda stresses the importance of the stabalizer.

I have found in my Jeep experience that it is most often attributed to a couple of things:

1. Worn out or loose Trac Bar mounts
2. Worn out steering stabilizer

I don't think this neccessarily transfers over to Ford suspension perfectly, but the principle is the same. In Jeeps, the tires start bouncing back and forth due to uncontrolable (by input from the steering wheel) slop in the steering. This slop in the steering can be traced back to the trac bar or the poorly engineered steering system which inherintly has slop that has been factory controlled with a stabilizer. In 80% of the situations that I have encountered, they are fixed by putting on a new high quality steering stabilizer. A few times, the situation had to be traced to the Trac bar. One time it was a worn out heim joint on the track bar, another time it was a loose bolt and a wobbled out bolt hole on the upper trac bar mount, another time it was a cracked and nealry broken upper Trac Bar mount, and the most recent was a misfitted bolt size on the lower trac bar mount (my brother thought it would work ).

Anyway, hope this helps. I agree that worn Tie Rod ends can attribute to Death Wobble, but on Jeeps the above have been the most common so far.

Cody, I will borrow my roomate's angle finder and we'll measure the caster. granted, if the caster is way off, it's going to take some hacking and welding to fix. I'm guessing that for a factory setup, the eccentric washers on the LCA's serve to adjust the caster. the UCA's don't have the cams, do they?

[Arya Ebrahimi]

UCA's don't have the cams to my knowledge.

The LCA's do have them on TJ's only, not on XJ's(or ZJ's) to my knowledge. I can't remember if XJ, ZJ, or WJ LCAs are any longer shorter. Might need to look into that if the caster is beyond the range of the CAM bolts.

Ary

[Steinberg]

right now his cam bolts have no adjustment anyway. the homemade bracketry on the 44 just has straight holes there rather than the slots for the cams.

[tsmall07]

My money is on the alignment being a big part of it :shock:

[Steinberg]

thank you tyler for using the most broad, vague term to highlight the problem.

[jonesy]

My money is on the alignment being a big part of it :shock:

thanks. that really narrows down the field of possible problems.

[tsmall07]

My money is on the alignment being a big part of it :shock:

thanks. that really narrows down the field of possible problems.

I meant the 3/4" toe in. There is no way the thing will drive normally with that much toe in. I wouldn't be surprised if everything is good after you fix that. That much toe in would also greatly increase wear on all the other parts you think could be wrong (if you drove it like that for a while)

[hklvette]

I meant the 3/4" toe in. There is no way the thing will drive normally with that much toe in. I wouldn't be surprised if everything is good after you fix that. That much toe in would also greatly increase wear on all the other parts you think could be wrong (if you drove it like that for a while)

I don't know much about how toe affects handling, but why is it that the DW kicks in right at 30mph? Wouldn't the speed vary somewhat?

[jonesy]

My money is on the alignment being a big part of it :shock:

thanks. that really narrows down the field of possible problems.

I meant the 3/4" toe in. There is no way the thing will drive normally with that much toe in. I wouldn't be surprised if everything is good after you fix that. That much toe in would also greatly increase wear on all the other parts you think could be wrong (if you drove it like that for a while)

the toe in has been fixed for multiple days ... and i still get DW

[Steinberg]

Cody, if you wanna measure the caster soon, tonight might be my best bet. Don't know what your plans for the evening are, but I'm about burned out for schoolwork for the night and the rest of my week looks like I'll be living on campus.

[tsmall07]

I'm just speculating here, but it seems like caster would only affect your ride if you are turning. It doesn't seem like it would affect anything if you're going strait.

[Steinberg]

stop talking.