death wobbles! help!

i have a 94 xj with a 30 up front. i bought it with a 4.5 inch lift and it drove on the freeway just fine (other than an abnoxious vibration seemingly coming from the front drivetrain, what with that??). i soon went wheeling and ran my stock tie rod into a rock wich bent back and knocked into my trac bar tearing it completley off and breaking the trac bar mount in the process. on the drive home i encounterd a tearifying death wobble that would show its ugly head at as low of speeds as 30mph, and it should be mentioned that i was also running 32x11.50 bfg mud terrains. after examining the damage that incured i installed rusty's tie rod and drag link, and rusty's adjustable trac bar and trac bar mount. while i did the upgrades i also switched over to 33x15.50 superswamper sx's (which seem to grab at everything in the road enhancing the death wobble). after the install i drove it around the block and to my dismay the death wobble was very present indeed (the jeep wasnt in perfect allignment though, just an eyeball allignment). now i have added 1.75" coil spacers (for good measure) and am running about six inches of lift in the front, by the way i still have stock upper control arms and lower control arms for a 4.5" lift, but they dont seem to affect the caster (note: i had the death wobble problem before the spacers)... i have absolutely no clue as to why i am having this problem, i have a functional steering stabalizer, the only thing i can think of is that i have a popping noise that comes from the steering box area (cracked frame?) but i dont think that would affect it, my best guess is that the first few death wobbles loosend something up (control arm bushings maybe??)

please help, the jeep jamboree is only a two weeks off!

- jordan w

You have just about EVERYTHING possible wrong with your current front end setup....I will venture a guess there are at least four different things causing your death wobbles.... If DW has been going on for some time, and you continued to drive it. I would say, EVERY joint in your front end is suspect.

1) Not enough CASTER
2) TAR's BALANCE out...you did say you run SWAMPERS...
3) ALLIGNMENT...eyeball allignment...nuff said
4) RUSTY'S PARTS

PLEASE DO A SEARCH!

One little tid-bit of info for you...

STEERING STABILIZERS DO NOT CAUSE OR CURE DEATH WOBBLES.


Good luck,
CW

Check your wheel bearings. I had death wobble to begin with, but when the wheel bearings went it got twice as bad.

Caster is lost when you lift a 4link control arm, coil sprung vehicle. Caster is adjusted by legnthining the LCA. In XJ's there is also shims that can be added to adjust this. I have found lifted Jeeps LOVE POSITIVE caster!! I run mine at 8-9 degrees positive.

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

TARS are the four rubber round things on the ends of your axles. You called them SWAMPERS. Swampers are nororiously hard to keep in ballance. Be sure you have them done as close to perfect as you can. This is one area CLOSE IS NO GOOD!!!!

Have you done a search yet??? You will find TONS of info!!!!