Another death wobble needing to be fixed!!!

seth3678pb

seth3678pb

Member
Joined
Nov 16, 2013
Okay so for 3 to 4 months now I've been fighting a battle tp try and cure my death wobble and still no luck. When I first got it i could power through to 55 and no problems but at 45 to 50 ofcourse it would go crazy. And then it got so bad I couldn't go over 45 at all or it would shake so bad that it would bark the tires when they went side to side. Well I had to replace the transmission because it ended up have a crack in the housing and leaked like a sive so I went ahead and tore the front end apart and started to try and resolve my problem with the death wobble. I ended up having a bad lower trac bar mount along with a wore out upper mount and bad upper trac bar heim joint, bad drag link heim joints. So I cut the old lower off and ordered and ruff stuff offset lower and some .25 wall 1" ID dom with there 3/4 heim misalignment and weld in bungs. I fabricated my own upper mount and also replaced every heim on my drag and crossover bars along with adding some misalignments to both ends of the drag link so they would no longer bind when flexed. So all that done along with some added caster and realignment and still.have a shake at 45. I can power through again till 55 60 and I still get a lil shimmy side to side but never worse. I also put in hole reducers were the high steer and Pittman arm wholes were for a 3/4 bolt with no misalignments to 5/8 with the spacers. So there is no way for the bolt to move around on a hole to big. I'm just wanting some input form fellow jeepers. The only thing left is tires and a Profesional alignment. they are 39.5/13.5/20 irok bias ply with absolutely no weights on any wheel inside or out. I first got it the front tires were at 18 psi and back were 35. So I rotated them and it got worse. I haven't rotated them back yet. But also at 40 it feels like your on oval tires if that makes sense. You can feel the jeep go up and down slightly from I'm guessing flat spots. So if I can get input I would muh apprciate it. I added a bunch of pics to hopefully get a idea. This is all after fixing and also my drag and trac bar and withing 2 degrees of each other drag is at 10 degrees and trac bar is 12 or 13
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Have you checked the ball joints or unit bearings?
 
/\ what he said I would also get it aligned and see if you can balance the tires or borrow a set from someone to see if it is the tires. Mine has a little wobble between 30-35 cause of my beadlocks
 
How much toe? Any steering box slop?

And yes, get your pressures right, and get your.tires balanced. Don't even mess with anything else until you sort out the bare basics like that.
 
Put vehicle up on 4 good jack stands Run in 4 wheel drive preferably with an assistant inside and watch tires spin. Look for out of round, wobble and shaking. if you don't have lockers one wheel may spin faster than other. You can slow down faster spinning tire with a 2x4 to make other speed up. You can also listen for a bad or noisey wheel bearing by holding a length of plastic tubing between your ear and bearing housing.
 
moldman05 said:
Put vehicle up on 4 good jack stands Run in 4 wheel drive preferably with an assistant inside and watch tires spin. Look for out of round, wobble and shaking.
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Do this after getting wheels balanced. You can't trust any results with unloaded wheels without being balanced; there's too much system compliance that will amplify the imbalance and you'll chase your tail forever. You can even see this on a balancing machine, you can put a wheel/tire on the machine and it will look like it's egg shaped while spinning until you add the balance weights, then it will smooth right out.
 
seth3678pb said:
But also at 40 it feels like your on oval tires if that makes sense. You can feel the jeep go up and down slightly from I'm guessing flat spots.
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this pretty much tells it all bud, really sounds like it's in the tires. Stock XJ running gear is easy but new to d44 setup..having that said, have you had someone turn your wheels back and forth sitting idling and watching your front end...especially that track bar. The track bar seems little short, might be wrong here but when i just recently did my 44 swap in front, i first did a track bar about that length and gave me all kinds of crap...then i went back with factory length track bar and all is great. mine isn't street worthy but it still rode descent with no death wobble (only minor shaking from my grooved tires). someone with more exp. in track bar lengths will know more but that was a issue with mine. I wouldn't waste money on alignment being the issue..I've not had one death wobble due to alignment being off, sure it may wander or pull to one side but not death wobble. 95%chance it's those tires having bad spots ....pump them all up to 50 and see what happens then run them all at 15 and see how the ride changes...i've done this many times to rule out a bad tire(s) and swapping front to rear. Good luck
 
I would add to spin wheels slow at first to determine if you have bent wheel or an out of round tire or broken belts. I think it would be difficult or impossible to properly balance a wheel /tire with these conditions.
 
I wonder how you could professionally align that? The only thing to align is the toe in and you can do that yourself. I bet your problems go away with balanced tires.
 
Tradarcher said:
I wonder how you could professionally align that? The only thing to align is the toe in and you can do that yourself. I bet your problems go away with balanced tires.
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Aligning that setup at home with a tape measure would be a shot in the dark. Professional alignment set ups attach to the wheel and read angles that are much more accurate than most home alignments that use a location on the tire for reference. A tire that bulges out that far from the wheel isn't going to get you accurate results. I did a tape measure recently on my jeep doing a tape job a few different ways and even though the measurements off of the tire indicated I had a toe in of about 1/4" the alignment shop said it was toed out when they got it up on the rack/machine.

No doubt balanced tires are going to help solve the bad ride going on.

I have read people on pirate putting golf balls or tennis balls into large super swampers that have flat spots in the tires....
 
for home alignment, you can pop the tires off and measure off the brake rotors, much more accurate
 
NickMaul said:
Aligning that setup at home with a tape measure would be a shot in the dark. Professional alignment set ups attach to the wheel and read angles that are much more accurate than most home alignments that use a location on the tire for reference. A tire that bulges out that far from the wheel isn't going to get you accurate results. I did a tape measure recently on my jeep doing a tape job a few different ways and even though the measurements off of the tire indicated I had a toe in of about 1/4" the alignment shop said it was toed out when they got it up on the rack/machine.

No doubt balanced tires are going to help solve the bad ride going on.

I have read people on pirate putting golf balls or tennis balls into large super swampers that have flat spots in the tires....
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I see what you are saying. The method I used didn't use straight edges on the outside of the tires. If that method is used then standoffs should be used against the rim to get the the straight edge off the tire. Still, it's a crude method for a crude suspension.
 
^ for the win

if you got the upsanddowns = probably tires flatspotted/out of balance. if you got the bounces = probably shocks are dead too if you got the lanechangez then you've probably got too much toe in. you can have them big bitches pad balanced or dynamic balanced too. before you do anything, take them out in the sun and pump them up to 40 or so and let them warm up with no load on them = naturalize their shape a bit. then back them back down to 20 psi and drive it.
 
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