Death wobble and camber problems!?

I just lifted my jeep to about 7 inches, and I am having horrible DW problems. I know there are many causes for death wobble, however, my caster is knocked in fairly dramatically when looking at it head on. Im just kind of assuming that it is ball joints... I still have short arms, and until I can correct the situation, the caster is off as well. The only reason that I am not chalking it up to the caster is because of the camber issue. If anyone has any insight or has experience with this, your 2cents would be greatly appreciated. And when I say death wobble, when I looked out the window at the tires... they were just loosely flopping around, felt like the front was going to give out, much more than poorly balanced tires and a shimmy.:shiver:

short arm or long arm lift, what are your caster angles, are you using an adjustable track bar, what steering are you running? with no information we can't help much.

You cannot adjust camber on a dana 30 front end, there are many threads on this subject here, in fact I just replied to one this morning. I'm not sure how to take the info you're giving, because you say you can tell caster is knocked in when looking at it head on. Camber is how far in or out the top of the tires are. caster is related to the angle of the pinion up or down when looking at it from the side.

camber can be affected by the caster angle, if you're on a short arm lift and your pinion is pointing at the sky you're going to have horrible camber because the housing is rotated in a way it was not designed to be. same as if it is too low.

Photographs would be useful.

sorry about that, I meant that the camber is knocked in... Im a careless typer. The steering setup is stock for now, I have an adjustable track bar (first thing I checked to make sure it was tight). I mentioned that I am running short arms (adjustable of course), but I plan on getting some drop brackets for them soon. Its embarrassingly slopped together right now, but I don't have the cash to get everything all new all at once.

at that much lift stock steering is going to be maxed out at the passenger side knuckle for starters, I just went through the same problem on mine last summer.

With short arms and no drop brackets your control arm angles are going to suck horribly, you're in for a very harsh ride because the arms will want to shove back against the frame side brackets instead of pivoting up when you hit bumps in the road.

You need to get an angle finder and measure your caster angle, if your pinion is pitched too far up or down it's going to make your steering knuckles fight the angle to keep straight, because the C's on the ends of the axle tubes aren't at the correct angle anymore. my money is on that being a good part of your problem.

you can check to see if your balljoints are worn out by jacking up one side at a time and grabbing the tire at 12 and 6 o'clock. if you can pivot it in or out at the top or bottom your balljoints are probably bad.

Seems like if you didn't have the cash to buy it all new at once then you should have waited to put the lift on... Now you have an undrivable vehicle. Just sayin.

Listen to Grimm, he's hittin the nail on head.

Thanks grimm, what steering setup are you running? Was considering the V8 ZJ pitman arm and tie rod, but I don't know if that will be sufficient. As far as driving it, yeah, I don't even attempt. Luckily its no longer my daily driver, so I have plenty of time to tinker with it. I have the sense not to drive it, may seem dumb for piecing together a lift, but not so much so as to drive it around before its done.

I had the zj v8 steering, and the TRE at the passenger knuckle was 1" from being maxed out at ride height. I upgraded to the JCR 1 ton over the knuckle setup because the 1 ton TREs that it uses have more range of deflection, but it's still the limiting factor in my front end. I also now have a 1" drop pitman arm.

this is my jeep, in this pic it's sitting at about 10-12" of lift over stock, including the height gained from the 33s.



I've since put shorter springs on the coilovers and dropped it to about 8" of lift, now I'm working on getting the caster angle right because i'm having the exact problem you are. Keep your eyes on the for sale sections for a used set of drop brackets, since you have adjustable arms those plus drop brackets will let you dial in your angles and get that thing going straight again.

Poor caster, per se, would not cause "death wobble"; however, if the conditions that do cause death wobble are present, any unbalance in the front suspension may set it off. As long as your caster is between a positive 4* and ~ 8*, you should be OK. I've found less than 5* causes "wandering" on the road, but never "death wobble". When you did your lift, you should have adjusted toe (-in, ~1/8"), and checked caster; I'd recommend a minimum of 5*. After that, check camber. If it's off, that implies bad ball joints (a definite cause of death wobble), or bent axle housing. Excessive camber on one side will cause pulling to one side on the road, and eat up your tires.

looks like my pic link above is bad, here is the picture I was trying to show hosted on photobucket.

Thanks for the help and Ideas. I just gotta get the drop brackets and pitman arm, see what I end up with after some tuning and take it from there. Those fenders are sick btw.