Death Wobble

rebalance the tires before you waste time on anything else..Rubber wears off and it changes.When i worked in german car shops we balanced the wheels as part of the 15K service.

...I think you will find, if you check balance of the tires even more often, like every 6000 miles, or every other oil change, they will need balancing then too.

Spdloader

and rotate every 6000 miles. :-)

Aw heck Bill, *my* tires need to rotate roughly every hunnert inches or so. It sure beats draggin the durned things down the street.

L.W.(Bill) Hughes III proclaimed:

I took a look at the '96 XJ 2WD with the DW today.

The front end alignment is definitely off, the passenger front tire has the outboard edge well scrubbed and there is .... some .... evidence that a weight may have been thrown off. (cleaner spot on the rim)

While the wheels were off I greased all the zerks and noticed that several rubber bushings were in sad shape and there was an oily layer of dirt on the steering stabilizer tube.

The tires were all at different pressures, 3 ranged from 25-28 psi and one at 31 psi

The least amount of weight used to balance the tires was 1.75 ounces, 1 tire at 2.25 ounces, one at 2.75 ounces, and the highest had 5.25 ounces on

215-75x15 tires and all the weights were on the inside rim , none on the outside.

All 4 shocks work fine, Jeep settles during the first bounce

The DW first occurred a month and a half ago and last occurred yesterday afternoon at 47 mph in a straight and smooth section of level road.

Today the XJ was greased and the tires rotated front to back

I recommended all the tires be broken down and rotated 180 degrees and rebalanced and the front end aligned.

After that we would attend to the bushings and steering stabilizer

Any thoughts?

That's a good start. Get the bushings and stabilizer replaced and I'll bet the problem goes away.

Spdloader

I've got an 04 Rubicon and it goes nuts too when I cross RR tracks or a weird bump. Seems it only happens when I'm doing 50 - 60. I have to slow down to 30 go keep it under control. The wobble stops, then I can continue. I've only got 15K on it, and I took it back to the dealer and he said he couldn't find anything wrong. I'm thinking about replacing the steering damper with a bigger one. Do you think that would help? If so, any recommendations on what damper to get?

Thanks Lloyd

Tire balance and the steering damper are the causes. I wouldn't think twice about changing the damper, then go to a reputable tire shop. Have them check the tires for out-of-round, and spin balance and rotate.

Frequent tire rotation is an absolute must for Jeep owners. I do it every three months, and have them spin balanced too. It's been worth the money.

The stock damper is pretty lame. You'll be changing it sooner or later anyway and they don't cost that much.

If your dealer didn't know what was wrong, find somewhere else to take it. This is a very common problem.

Paul Nelson

in article Z2fWg.10818$ snipped-for-privacy@newssvr13.news.prodigy.com, Lloyd Hanning at snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.com wrote on 10/8/06 5:35 PM:

We banged on the damper for a while but couldn't get the tapered bolt out. What kind of puller should we have used if we could find one on Sunday afternoon....

The other end requires two 18 mm wrenches We had two 17s and two 19s but no

18s.....

pitman arm puller and a sledge.

How can you folks put up with broken Jeeps so early in their lives? Losing control on RR tracks is just plain insanity and any vehicle that does that should be taken off the road.

A steering damper shock is there to make the steering less twitchy when it hits ruts or rocks or has to do a fast maneuver.

For the Jeep to go into a 'death wobble', something must be broke!

You either have a bad tie rod end, a bad ball joint, a bad wheel bearing, a bad track bar end, either the bushing or it's ball joint, a bad bushing on a control arm or a broken belt in a tire, an out of round tire or a really out of balance tire.

To put a 'bigger' steering shock on is only an attempt to mask the symptoms of a potentially deadly problem.

Hint: It isn't called 'The Death Wobble' for nothing....

I would be freaking out on the service manager and taking him for a drive to show him.

I just figured out that in the 10 years I have owned my CJ7, it has never even 'had' a steering damper shock. There is only an empty tube there with a rod flopping around inside it.

When I first bought it it was dangerous and unacceptable to drive due to the death wobble. I said screw that and 'fixed' it by replacing the worn out steering parts like tie rod ends and ball joints. Never even thought of changing the steering shock.

My steering is still great....

Mike

86/00 CJ7 Laredo, 33x9.5 BFG Muds, 'glass nose to tail >

Fixing the death wobble on my JEEP was easy, getting someone to tell me why it happened wasnt so easy. It was the link that holds the axle from going side to side (forgot what they call it). It was the connection at the axle which was loose. If you catch it early enough, it wont make the bolt hole egg shaped. Just tighten up the link, if I remember correctly, it takes a big torx.

John > How can you folks put up with broken Jeeps so early in their lives?

That's the track bar which seems to be a really early failure point on the new Jeeps.

Mike

John >

I had death wobble in my YJ about 2 years ago and I replaced the shocks. That fixed it. Seemed like the old shocks weren't dampening the axle motion enough.

Well, I bought my 15mm pieces to work on an old VW bug - that I remember as I had to buy metric wrenches for the first time. And I still use the 36mm required for bugs but I also recall that I didn't run into an 18mm for several years after that and I had to get one to work on the Japanese 4-banger that Chrysler used in their first minivans. I think by now I have complete sets of them in 1/4, 3/8,

1/2, impact, > The older European standards for socket wrench sets did not include