My jeep wonders all over the road

I have checked my trackbar,tie rod ends, draglink, and they all seem tight. I also checked my u-joints in the steering shaft and they seem to be tight. Would the steering box cause my jeep to wonder all over the road

1993 Red XJ said:

I have checked my trackbar,tie rod ends, draglink, and they all seem tight. I also checked my u-joints in the steering shaft and they seem to be tight. Would the steering box cause my jeep to wonder all over the road

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Do a search, there is a lot of info how to take "slack" out of the steering box.

It can, there is pre-load adjustment on the steering box that can remove some slack in the steering box from wear.

With the motor off, standing outside the car, reach in the driver's window and grab the steering wheel, watch the front wheels as you move the steering wheel. If the steering wheel moves back and forth without the front tires moving at all, you have slack in the steering. Look at the wheel rim, not the tires, tire bend and flex, you should see the wheel rim barely moving, but you can tell its moving when you move the steering back and forth an inch.

If there is slack, its either the tie rod joints or the steering box. I've seen warning to never touch the pre-load adjustment to adjust it only an 1/8th of turn at a time, etc. You over tighten the steering box pre-load and it will chew itself up in short order.

Bad shocks can do this as well, if the car rolls without damping it can feed into the steering.

Bad Sway bars, their bushings and end links can really contribute to this, less control, even slack, in the resistance to roll, and the vehicle floats like a boat and feeds back into the steering.

... bad tires?

Front sway is good all new bushings and also new bushings in the links also. My tires are brand knew.

This is more of a question than a suggestion: to what extent can bad control arm bushings and track bar bushings lead to wander and sloppy steering?

My own guess would be tie rod ends unless you actually separated them to check. I would pop a couple of these loose and see if the spindles just flop loosely around. I'm getting ready to do this on my '93 that is beginning show some sloppiness.in the steering.

bad control arm bushings will make you steering feel weird. As the bushings let the axle move it's going to change the caster and track of the axle. It does some funny stuff, especially at highway speed.
I know this because I drove 10 hours back from flatnasty with a control arm bushing that was hosed.

If its wandering, then maybe you dont have enough caster. Did you do anything to it like lift it or change the pinion angle? Think of caster like a shopping carts front wheel. The wheel stays straight because it isnt attached directly above it, it is attached at an angle to allow the wheel to trail behind the mount.

http://www.ozebiz.com.au/racetech/theory/align.html

A bit of caster helps wander, also a bit of toe in helps wander. How much toe in do you have? Try 1/8th to 1/4 inch of toe in.

KH

CA bushings were good when they were installed about 2 months ago.

Preload on the steering box may be worth looking into. :dunno:
Everyting else seems to be good.

We need to check the toe.

We adjusted the toe to 1/4. Too windy to tell if this helped todayMaybe try tomorrow.

1993 Red XJ said:

We adjusted the toe to 1/4. Too windy to tell if this helped todayMaybe try tomorrow.

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1/4" in.

I should add that it was 3/4" toed in.

We adjusted it to 1/4" toe in.

It is super duperty windy today. Kinda hard to tell what it's doing on the road.

Any other ideas? Everyting on the front end it tight. Erich's bought some drop brackets and some Adj. LCA's. I think after the DB/LCA install a good ol' fashioned puter alignment is in order.

Hale

1993 Red XJ said:

We adjusted the toe to 1/4. Too windy to tell if this helped todayMaybe try tomorrow.

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Toe is supposed to be -0- with 4wd.
3/4 would really make it feel like it's on one wheel at a time, what ever one it's on is the way it's going.
It's the caster the make it go straight.

langer1 said:

Toe is supposed to be -0- with 4wd.
3/4 would really make it feel like it's on one wheel at a time, what ever one it's on is the way it's going.
It's the caster the make it go straight.

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I think that caster is the issue. No sense in messing with it until the DB's and LCA are on though.

I did think the toe was supposed to be 1/4" though.:dunno:

Hale

I've always thought toe in for command trac is 1/8" and select trac is 0?

Do a front end alignment. I just replaced a tie rod and both ends and was very careful to get everything back the way it was, took it for a ride and was worse than b-4 the new parts were installed. It wandered and if you turned the wheel quickly it felt as though you were going to tip over.
Had it aligned, they told me caster was off and the "toe" was off by a 1/2". Got it back and its fine now, except for steering wheel not being centered but I can take of that.

great! caster and toe almost always fix that.

KH

mine wanders around too. turns out it's the drivers side upper and lower ball joint that are the culprit. something I didn't find until the weight was off the wheel so i could give it an up/down torsion wiggle.

Take your jeep to a good reputable shop for the alignment. If they know what they are doing, they will check the entire front end for play before even trying to align it. And yes they will probably try to sell anything they find wrong, and probably refuse to do the alignment until its fixed. This doesn't mean you have to have them do the repairs. If its something you can do yourself, repair it and bring it back to them. Just remember them when its time for the alignment maybe a tip would even be in order for the time the tech spent on your vehicle. The discount places will try to align anything, they don't care their techs get paid hourly. Better shops with more qualified techs get paid on commision and won't waste their time aligning something thats worn out because if you complain, they would have to realign it for free.

im lazy, im not going to read what everyone else posted to you. but i will do this, ill give you a list of things that have gone wrong in my heep and caused me to have sloppy/wandering/weird steering.

***with all of these, have someone rock the steering wheel back and fro while youre on the ground looking for play***

-the upper track mount will go bad. either the TRE will wear or the actualy hole the TRE goes into with stretch into an oval shape\

-wheel bearings will not help the steering, they will only make it worse. jack teh front end up to have the tuires like 4" from the ground, take a prybar and use it as leverage, try to rock the tire as if changing camber. there should be virtually no play

-check ALL tierod ends, its helpfull to have a large pair of vicegrips. grip the tierods and attempt to turn and feel for play. i say this because sometimes the tierods are too hard to turn by hand but are still damaged nonetheless.

-has the vehicle been lifted? front end components replaced or removed? been in some sort of fenderbender? hit a pothole really hard? proper alinglend is critical to good steering. check tire wear patterns for clues. no uneven wear/rough edges/cupping should be present at all

-last but not least the steering box mesh adjustment. honestly, i have rarely seen them go horribly bad personaly. about a year ago i thought i needed my box to be adjusted, but in reality i did not. i didnt even give the hexscrew 1/2 of a turn out of adjustment and i baked my box. upon disectiopn i found all my recirculating balls blackened and my pinion and worm gear were pretty chewed up. check everything else before tampering with the steering box. ive been through 2 of them, first was to adjustment when it was not needed, second was because it had disgusting fluid and did not lubricate.

if you have any sort of questions dont hesitaste to pm, id hate to see a fellow xj guy have to go through what i did.

cheers :cheers: