Violent Vibrations

I decided to hop on the freeway today, and while heading home on I-70, cruising at about 70 mph, i hit a small bump in the road which caused my Jeep to shake very violently, and I had to pull to the shoulder and slow to below 30 to make it stop. It had a vibration at about 50-55 before, but never this violent.

I believe I have narrowed the problem down to both
A)My alignment is off
B)Ball joints, Tie rod ends, or both.

But, I could be wrong. Experienced Input greatly appreciated.

XJHummerRescue said:

I decided to hop on the freeway today, and while heading home on I-70, cruising at about 70 mph, i hit a small bump in the road which caused my Jeep to shake very violently, and I had to pull to the shoulder and slow to below 30 to make it stop. It had a vibration at about 50-55 before, but never this violent.

I believe I have narrowed the problem down to both
A)My alignment is off
B)Ball joints, Tie rod ends, or both.

But, I could be wrong. Experienced Input greatly appreciated.

Click to expand...

Sounds right to me. Do a search for "death wobble" and you well even find a movie.

I had exactly the same thing happen to me about 3 years ago and I nearly shit myself. Yes, that's death wobble and if you've never experience it before, it's a brown pants moment. It turned out to be a bad steering damper so you might wanna check that out.

My first death wobble experience scared the heck out of me.

Going about 65 MPH the front end of my jeep literally jumped, twisted and rocked about six to eight inches. As it turned out it the "fix" was replacing a bad steering dampener as Dr. Dyno...but recently I found a badly connected trackbar at the top bracket – the castle nut was too short so the trackbar was never locked down and was just hanging there.

I guess my point is the steering dampener could have just masked the real problem of the bad trackbar.

Just realised I neglected to mention the most important part.
I popped the hood when on the shoulder and my power steering pump had overflowed (my cap is broken) and there was power steering fluid everywhere.
Not sure what caused this, but I am pretty sure it is also the culprit for my death wobble.

What could have caused the power steering to overflow as such?

Also, the power steering fluid was not overfilled, and was even a little low.

Just a hunch I'd guess the wobble would shuttle the steering arm back & forth violently and oil would be returning to the reservoir in rapid pulses. Without a proper cap, some of it is bound to splash out.

Death wobble, my Jeep has never done it but the first time I saw that term used here I knew exactly what it meant. Back when Hector was a pup I had a '67 Suburban 1/2T 2WD that did that exactly two times in the few years I had it. Checked it from stem to stern each time and never did find a cause. The rig was low mileage and tight and cherry. I guessed an unusual combanation of loose (but not too lose) joints that played the geometry just right. The first episode was with squishy passenger radials that came on the truck when I got it and it was extremely violent. The second time I had switched to classic 6 ply bias tires and it was much less violent.