New Member and Wandering question

Hey guys, been a long time lurker and finally have a question that I cannot seem to find an answer from searching.

Little about the BEAST(yes I know it's not a XJ, but similar platform to my issue);

I have a 1998 Jeep GC 5.9. It have adjustable short arms front and rear, 4.5" lift, 33's BFG all terrain. WJ knuckle swap with stock WJ steering. Front adjustable TB and Rear TB lift to properly align the Rear axle. Durango steering box


OK, know my question or issue. My jeep wanders at higher speeds 55+, higher I go the worse it gets, granted it is better since adjusting/replacing parts. Below is what I have done

New TRE
New(rebuilt) box from parts store-actually this helped a little
New Ball joints, they are the correct one for the swap WJ uppers and XJ lower or vise versa
Toe has been adjusted to dead even, toe in 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, the more in made it worse. I seem to have less wandering at dead even
Caster is at 5.5 degree(checked by alignment shop)
TB is adjustable poly bushings, double shear. Bracket not loose
Have swapped out 249 for 242

I do not have bump steer, nor is nothing loose, all bushings are good and not rotted, relatively new. I have even attempted a poly spacer in the drag link on the axle end because i did have tie rod roll. This made a significant difference. It does seem when I turn the steering from the initial center, it seems I need to turn more before it actually turns, if that makes any sense. When I do move the steering wheel, the tires do turn, just seems slow.

I am up to any ideas, I will also let you know if I tried it and what the outcome was. My front driveshaft has a 7 degree diff and I do not have vibes, but if I move it more, I am very sure it will. Front is ujoint, not CV.

I do have a transfer case drop because I was getting vibes and tracked it down to the rear angle was just too much. So the drop really made a diff, but still vibes, yes new ujoints. So eventually will get a SYE.

SO any ideas? Am I stuck with the wandering?

Steering stabilizer? Steering box spacer?

I would try rotating your tires and see if it changes. I had a busted belt and it would go any which way other than straight.

wander is usually a result of incorrect toe-in

can also be bad caster resulting from too much angle

after that I would probably check TREs and ball joints

Thanks guys,

I think Ill remove the stabilizer and see if that makes a difference. No spacer on the steering box and "frame" rail is not broken or cracked.

The tires are actually brand new, i think I have maybe 50miles on them. It did the same wandering on my 31's MTR as it does on the 33's. Honestly the new tires made a difference, just slightly.

When I had it aligned by the monkeys at the shop, they actually toed it out 1/16". I did move it even, 1/16" toe in, 1/8" in, I also went extreme at 3/8" in and that was just horrible. 1/16" in seems to be the happy spot at the moment. Ties rods I have not been very happy with, I think I am going to go away from the WJ setup and try OTK one tons so I can keep my track bar in the stock location.

I have been using the Mevotech TRE's and the seem to move very easily, like rotate very easily, but not sloppy. I am used to TRE's being very tight. These are not, and that might be all my issues honestly. These also may have 200 miles on them.

I did notice that I had very slight movement in my upper driver ball joint, I was able to tighten it just a bit and that seemed to have stopped the movement, also helped the wandering a little. I just feel now I am throwing parts at it, and that is frustrating

So I think I found the issue. After taking everything off because yet another camping trip foiled by the Jeep, I was in the process of installin the old knuckles and brakes, before taking off the bearing and axle shaft, I noticed there was some binding when the axles pointed straight. Both sides did the same thing. So I narrowed it down to the axle shafts(cv joints) were the cause. Did not do it when shaft was installed, so ball joints are smooth. Driver upper did actually have some play, so that is going to get replaced

I do have the spacers on the knuckles, I tried to add more of a space, still binded. So now I am going to try new axle shafts since it is possible they have a flat spot in the bearing. Besides, boots are torn and they needed replacing anyways.

I will keep this updated in case someone else has a similar issue. We all know how frustrating it is when an outcome is not posted.

It would be interesting to hear that the CV shafts were a cause, because they typically make a popping/clunking sound when steering when they wear out. They do not typically cause other drivability problems. If the drivers upper ball joint shows signs of play, double check the lower ball joint. The upper ball joint is not a "standard" ball joint like the lower. Instead, the upper is a pin that turns and moves up and down. It is mostly there to keep the knuckle and axle C from blowing apart under shock loading where there is some deflection occurring. This is in comparison to a front suspension with upper and lower control arms where both ball joints can swivel.

The question I have, and I'm going to ask you to clarify so I get a better picture of what is going on:

"I do have the spacers on the knuckles, I tried to add more of a space, still binded."

What do you mean by that? That is telling me something is not correct in this setup.

fiveniner said:

Little about the BEAST(yes I know it's not a XJ, but similar platform to my issue);

I have a 1998 Jeep GC 5.9 (ZJ) . It have adjustable short arms front and rear, 4.5" lift, 33's BFG all terrain. WJ knuckle swap with stock WJ steering. Front adjustable TB and Rear TB lift to properly align the Rear axle. Durango steering box


OK, know my question or issue. My jeep wanders at higher speeds 55+, higher I go the worse it gets, granted it is better since adjusting/replacing parts. Below is what I have done

New TRE
New(rebuilt) box from parts store-actually this helped a little
New Ball joints, they are the correct one for the swap WJ uppers and XJ lower or vise versa
Toe has been adjusted to dead even, toe in 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, the more in made it worse. I seem to have less wandering at dead even
Caster is at 5.5 degree(checked by alignment shop)
TB is adjustable poly bushings, double shear. Bracket not loose
Have swapped out 249 for 242

I do not have bump steer, nor is nothing loose, all bushings are good and not rotted, relatively new. I have even attempted a poly spacer in the drag link on the axle end because i did have tie rod roll. This made a significant difference. It does seem when I turn the steering from the initial center, it seems I need to turn more before it actually turns, if that makes any sense. When I do move the steering wheel, the tires do turn, just seems slow.

I am up to any ideas, I will also let you know if I tried it and what the outcome was. My front driveshaft has a 7 degree diff and I do not have vibes, but if I move it more, I am very sure it will. Front is ujoint, not CV.

Click to expand...

This whole post is confusing! If your running a WJ steering tie rod roll doesn't mean/do anything.
Are you saying you had to do a unit bearing change w/ spacers to accomadate the u-joint axles and 5 on 4-3/4 hubs?
Besides toe-in, a bad box, I would also look a short arms at that lift.

What I meant by "more space", was when i first put everything together, I tried seeing what issues I was going to have since I was using CV axle shafts and everything I read they used the 1/4" spacer for ujoint axles so I mocked everything up to see what issues I would have. Spacer is needed for both because it bounded up when the axle centered. After added the spacer there was no more binding when centered. Fast forward continous wandering, I took everything apart and noticed the same binding when I mocked up without the spacer. So, I tried to see if I spaced it out some more, would it still bind. I used washers to see if it helped. It didn't. That is when I decided to get new axle shafts.

For the WJ knuckle swap, what I have read is you need WJ lower ball joints because the taper is different than the XJ.

With the "tie rod roll", the drag link rotated quite a bit, very similar to tie rod roll. I thought that could have been the issue, but it was not.

I have the ujoint front driveshaft, not the CV driveshaft which I have read it causes issues.

I'm sorry this is confusing to most, I was trying to explain what was going on with a lot of frustration and non clear thinking on my part. But it does seem that the axle shafts were the issue. It looks like there was a flat spot on a couple of the balls and scoring in the race. Accompanied by more movement than there should have been near the snap ring that hold the shaft to the bearings.

The axle bearing had a little play, not too excessive, but enough to know that it will eventually fail, I decided to replace both of them when I did the new axle shafts. But after installing, no binding, didn't seem to wander, and I was not fighting to keep the jeep on the road.

Have you posted over on http://www.nagca.com/forum/ ?

No, because the members here are way more active and i know i would have gotten now responses or thoughts of which direction to go. If it was gc related, them i would have, but being a dana 30 with the same (ish) setup as an xj, I could use the same principals.