what cured your death wobble?

sorry for the noob-ish question, just wanting to hear experiences

background: had a 1.5" lift on my xj for several months, it handled great... i just bumped it up to a 3" lift and now it hates life and has death wobble. first and foremost i went and got lifetime alighnment (well worth it) and everything was normal except the caster was a little lack-luster, almost a degree off on one side and half a degree on the other. understanding that is something i cannot change with my stock lca's i moved on to the next thing. the driver side hub assy had a little play in it so i replaced it. helped, but still had it. moved on to lifetime balance/rotation for my 31's (also put the lightest 2 on the front), once again it helped but didn't cure it.

i looked over the torque specs for all the steering and suspension bolts and they are all fine. also none of them seem exceedingly loose, including the tracbar. ball joints also seem good.

next i am going to redrill my tracbar mount to center the axle and use my lifetime alignment to get it aligned again with that fixed and the new hub assy fixed the alignment should change some.

on my last xj also with a 3" lift i had death wobble that was seemingly uncureable so i swapped in waggy 44s and leafs up front with probably 6-7" lift and it was far more stable than the coils ever were, doing 65 on 36s with 1 psi in the tires (beadlocks) in an xj buggy is fun and suprisingly it handled extremely well

anyways, what was the culprit in your death wobble case? what cured it?

i replaced the steering stabilizer and had it aligned. a lot of ppl say that simply replacing the stabilizer is a band-aid and doesn't address the problem. but i haven't had any problems since the stab/align so i'm not sure myself. i'm just glad i'm not getting death wobble on the highway anymore. i'm about to put drop brackets on soon to correct my control arm angles. hopefully DW wont return lol.

I ended up fighting DW for quite a long time. I replaced many components before I finally cured it. My fixed ended up being the LCA bushings. They didn't look too bad, but after replacing them I haven't had any more problems.

hydro assist and 4 new ball joints

Control arm bushings and tie rod ends.

It's all 16 years old, anyway, right? Even on a stock rig they'd be past ready to replace.

Worked wonders on mine.

Robert

after replacing control arms, shocks, trac bar, steering set up, turned out it was really bad tires/out of balance. It's the easiest and probably the cheapest thing to try first, put different tires on and see if it helps.

An alignment cured mine.

def.ho said:

i replaced the steering stabilizer and had it aligned. a lot of ppl say that simply replacing the stabilizer is a band-aid and doesn't address the problem. but i haven't had any problems since the stab/align so i'm not sure myself.

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The alignment was what did it, the steering stabilizer did nothing.

i am going to pull the steering stabilizer tonight and see if it is bad (i am sure it is) and replace it because even a band-aid would be fine with me right now i am going to moab friday and it is a 4 hr drive :gag:

as far as ca bushings go, do you just replace them with stockers from the zone? they look like they suck to replace since they have that sleeve that i am sure will be super-stuck. i replaced ball joints and all the steering on my old 3" lifted xj and i still had dw...

keep em coming

try rotating tires man. I didn't want to believe it at first either but you would be surprised. Costs you nothing but time. If you notice a differance chances are you have a tire out of balance.

just had the tires balanced and rotated with the two lightest on front three days ago... helped but didn't cure it

i know what you mean though my buddies tj had dw bad and he got new tires and it was gone. imagine that, 33's were better for it than stock size tires haha

xj_punk said:

everything was normal except the caster was a little lack-luster, almost a degree off on one side and half a degree on the other. understanding that is something i cannot change with my stock lca's

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That is not entirely true. All the XJ's I have worked on including both of mine have a little bit of adjustability to them. Look at where the lower body side control arm mounts. On that box mount you will see 2 studs sticking out facing the rear. This holds the control arm in the "slotted" mount. You just add and remove shims as needed. The shims go in between the rear inner part of the control arm box and the mount that is inside it. Keep in mind I am use to working on the older 87 to 92 models, so I am speculating on if your has this or not, as your profile says you have a 93.

But my fix was a caster related issue. Keep in mind when you lift any vehicle the alinment shops(most) will only have the stock specs to go off of, and 90 percent of the time the stock specs will not work on a modified vehicle.

combination of worn LCA bushings and ball joints.

i noticed that on my old xj when i cut it up but never thought about using it for adjusting... weird. why don't alignment shops use it? you should make a write-up for sure.

what caster specs should i go for? i believe the sheet i have says 6.5-8.5 is the ideal range and i was 5.8 and 5.4 i IIRC.

magimerlin said:

That is not entirely true. All the XJ's I have worked on including both of mine have a little bit of adjustability to them. Look at where the lower body side control arm mounts. On that box mount you will see 2 studs sticking out facing the rear. This holds the control arm in the "slotted" mount. You just add and remove shims as needed. The shims go in between the rear inner part of the control arm box and the mount that is inside it. Keep in mind I am use to working on the older 87 to 92 models, so I am speculating on if your has this or not, as your profile says you have a 93.

But my fix was a caster related issue. Keep in mind when you lift any vehicle the alinment shops(most) will only have the stock specs to go off of, and 90 percent of the time the stock specs will not work on a modified vehicle.

Click to expand...

I was just peachy with 3.5" Rusty's coils, fixed LCAs, RE1600 track bar, on 31x10.5 BFG ATs on wheels with about 3.25" BS. I rode like this for about a year, figured I'd add 1" (measured 0.70") spacers up front to level it out, about crapped myself when the death wobbles hit.
So I started changing the free stuff first, tire rotation, redneck alignements, tire psi changes, nothing helped. Then started throwing parts on...here was did not help...unit bearings, new brakes (turned rotors), new steering stabilizer, ZJ pitman arm, HD tie rod, RE1660 track bar with cross brace to pass. side uni-rail, RE SF UCAs.

What fixed it...RE SF adjustable LCA's, dialed in to match the length of the Rusty's fixed LCA's. The bushings felt real tight, I guess they were just not right for the dymanics created when I added 0.70" extra height.

My fix was to toe out the front end 1/8" to 1/4". This creates enough drag without putting too much excess wear on the tires. I think the factory recommends the tires be parallel or toe in, but this is what worked for me.

Chris

chris_amrein said:

My fix was to toe out the front end 1/8" to 1/4". This creates enough drag without putting too much excess wear on the tires. I think the factory recommends the tires be parallel or toe in, but this is what worked for me.

Chris

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That sounds all wrong. The tires pulling oputward against one another would exacerbate any death-wobble issues you may have. If it's working for you, then more power to you, but it shouldn't be.

My DW was cured by repairing the lower track bar bracket hole, which had wobbled out to a slot. I welded a piece of 3/16" steel over it that was match-drilled to the factory hole, solved the problem. Tire balance is also a big factor, I have one basically unbalanceable Swamper on my trail set of tires that I can only run in the rear. I have one MTR that is also worse than the others, I notice it when it gets rotated to the front.

In my case, replacing my lower track bar bolt and getting it nice and tight remedied the issue.

My theory is this:
Any play whatsoever in the track bar can (and I'm fairly sure will, given the right conditions) cause death wobble, as the front axle is then effectively "bouncing" left and right under the car, which is further compounded by the subtle changes in wheel direction with each "bounce" (as the steering linkage moves with the axle, but the drag link remains fixed to the pitman arm, resulting in further wheel direction changes in the opposite direction of the axle's movement).

Aside from my particular case, I'm sure any play whatsoever in the front suspension (especially worn rubber bushings) can result in Death Wobble.

i checked to see how tight that bolt was and it was like 1 million ft/lbs no lie i am not sure if i will be able to pull it off there tonight to re-drill the mount. likely scenario is it will break when i get the impact even close to it.

any speculation on the axle being pulled to the driver side an inch or two contributing to dw? i can see how the side-load on the ca bushings could cause a potential issue. i will redrill it tonight and have it aligned tomorrow and we will see...

xj_punk said:

i noticed that on my old xj when i cut it up but never thought about using it for adjusting... weird. why don't alignment shops use it? you should make a write-up for sure.

what caster specs should i go for? i believe the sheet i have says 6.5-8.5 is the ideal range and i was 5.8 and 5.4 i IIRC.

Click to expand...

most shops do not use it because they do not know about them. unless its an older mechanic that is. If there little computer says no real adjustment they follow that. Alot of align shops do not have or want to deal with the shims in a older vehicle, so they will say there is no adjustment.

No real write up needed. add more shims to get more caster, less shims for well less caster.

When I did mine(I have adjustable lowers) I put my angle finder on the diff mounting bolts and adjusted till about right for my lift. I am at 5.5 " but cannot remember what angle I have it at.

I just got DW for the first time on the drive home Sunday from wheeling.

turns out, the trac bar bracket bolts (x4) on the frame side were ALL loose. I guess I didn't torque properly, or maybe I should have Loc-Tite the bolts, but after 2 fights I had my buddy turn the wheel back and forth while I looked at the steering links... it was quite obvious!