All,
Last night I was on the freeway when I hit a sizeable pothole on a curve doing about 60 MPH. Suddenly, my '82 Scrambler starts vibrating like one of the wheels is held on by a single poorly tightened lugnut. As I (frantically) slow down to pull over, the vibration suddenly stops. I examine everything front to rear, and today raised the Jeep and checked every tire. Everything's tight. I then drove the Jeep for over an hour, and the vibration didn't happen again, even after hitting the same pothole.
The tie rods, steering knuckle bushings, and steering damper are all about two years old. The front wheel bearings are four years old, and I inspected, re-packed, and re-torqued them four months ago. I inspected and re-packed the rear wheel bearings last summer. The shocks are seven years old, but still look OK. The bushings on the leaf springs are polyurethane, and about six years old. The springs themselves look to be factory, and are getting sort of flat. I have no extra lift and I'm running stock-size tires, which are in pretty good shape.
Does anyone have any ideas as to why this happened? Could the springs have caused this?