Scary Front end Death Wobble

ahh yes the evil death wobble.. I drive this rig nearly 150 miles a day for work 6 days a week. it has nearly 185,000 on the ticker and it is a 99 sport ax15 4x4 4.0l all stock.

I would assume the death wobble is when your doing about 55+ you hit a little bump and then 3 seconds later your justing waiting for the wheels to fall off the car, as your flying around in your seat. correct?

I took some pics of all my front end joints etc and im wondering which ones need to be replaced.. i would imagine im cutting my life short here if I keep driving it everyday like this.

Also I picked up a 96 xj 4.0L aw4 2wd that runs perfect for 200$ but it looks like a pile of garbage and all the front end parts seem to be in perfect shape, are the parts transferable?

front sway bar bushing above the passenger wheel


Passenger wheel upper ball joint


the piece that attaches to the powersteering idk what its called


driver side upper ball joint


steering arm for the driver side wheel


give me your input on how stupid i might be for driving this 150 miles a day, and please let me know if my 96 parts that look much better than this can be transfered.

yup, you can transfer the parts from your 96. You might want to just buy new tie rod ends instead of putting used parts on there to get rid of death wobble. Get a new steering stabilizer too, that should help a little. Check your control arm bushings also.

Seems like a lot of work to reuse any old joints like tie rod ends, pittman arm connection, or ball joints. If I did the work, any wearing joint would be new.

Make sure everything is tight and replace your TRE's and steering stabilizer and go from there.

don't forget a good alignment.

Don't forget to check the track arm bushings and mounting points--the frame mounting point likes to egg out the hole. And check for cracks too.

i just fixed a death wobble on mine. worn control arm bushings that went soft and too much caster. replaced the control arms with aftermarket ones with poly bushings and all is good.

zedpapa