Wiggle, wobble, whatever!!!!

88 MJ Pioneer 4.0, 5 spd. ~~3" lift 31x10.5...ALMOST completely rebuilt

In the last few months I've done:
Track bar bushing - axle side , new bolt, no rust, torqued n' tight.
New steering dampner
Extended SB links
LCA bushings - rubber
Drove it back and forth to work for a week...200 mi. All OK

All TRE's including drag link
Drove it back and forth to work for a week...200 mi. All OK

ZJ V8 tie rod with a new TRE, solid end good with new boot. Bolted right in.
Drove it back and forth to work for a week...200 mi. All OK. Great even, a more solid feeling.

So I took it to Les Schwab to have it aligned to finish off my work. Just to be sure.

Drove it back and forth to work for a week...200 mi . and then it started... wiggling at about 52 and went away at 60.
I was also pulling slightly to the right. I swapped the already balanced tires from my XJ, still wiggled...now it's more a wobble...but it is not severe...like DW...but it doesn.t go away at 60...just gets worse. Now I CAN"T drive it back and forth to work...I gotta fix this.

So I took it back to Les Schwab. They checked the alignment and said it was right on. They balanced the tires
again. The only thing that really CHANGED anything between all that was getting the alignment done, but they say alignment would not cause it to wobble...so they balanced the tires AGAIN!!!

So, now what. I need to get this thing rolling. Any ideas??

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2012 atriot:

Check the upper track bar mount. See if can tighten the nut (without over-torqueing). If you find slack and it drives ok afterwards, replace the track bar.

How come you can use the zj tre on the 88? I thought 91 and up were the only swap.

But yeah, I had the DW on my 89 years ago, had over 200,000mi on front end.

So I took it to Sears and after all linkage, ball joints and st. dampere, rolled it out and it wobbled just as bad!

The manager rode with around the block and we went back to the shop and he refunded the whole bill like 1200 bucks. After 1 week in there he was tired of dealing with it!

So I went and got a set of 31" BFGs and new frt rotors and all has been good for the last 200,000mi.

I guess it just shifted the geometry a little away from whatever weak link I had up front.

I've had radial tires fail internally and cause vibration. Plenty of tread, balanced, aligned .. everything looks ok til you drive it; at night, headlights in the rear view mirror look like cheerios New tires and the problem is gone.

my2monkeys said:

How come you can use the zj tre on the 88? I thought 91 and up were the only swap. ...

Click to expand...

91 and up V8 ZJ draglink and tie rod probably fits all XJs up to 2001. Search for one of the 872,309,485,728 posts regarding this.

Stock XJ tie rod in the wild ..

larsen said:

Check the upper track bar mount. See if can tighten the nut (without over-torqueing). If you find slack and it drives ok afterwards, replace the track bar.

Click to expand...

I agree that actually replacing the track bar is a good idea. It is one of the most common causes of "wobbling". I just cured death wobble on my 99 with a new Moog bar and the old one only showed just the very slightest amount of play....

Larsen...I believe you have something there... to try to tighten the existing trac bar. So I slid out the cotter pin and was able to tighten a bit with just my fingers...about a quarter turn. So I put the short wrench on it and was still able to turn it AT LEAST two full turns, comfortably. It's def not TOO tight. There is about 1/4" play left as my wife turns the wheel lock to lock. It seems like it's trying to bind and then it pops in. So...new track bar coming tomorrow.

I have checked the ball joints and bearings, as did the dude at Schwab's.

We'll see what happens, but the most glaring thing now is the track bar, as already said. I'll update tomorrow or the next.

Thanx

I was curious if this fixed your problem. I have the shake/wobble around 50mph up, and am about to start buying things to try to cure it, like u-joints, wheel bearings, rotors, etc etc since the new set of tires didn't fix it, actually made it worse for some reason. Im on stock height and tire size.

larsen said:

91 and up V8 ZJ draglink and tie rod probably fits all XJs up to 2001. Search for one of the 872,309,485,728 posts regarding this.

Click to expand...

That is ridiculous.. there are more than that.