Almost killed myself. Time to Diagnose!

**Timmy** · 09-01-2014, 11:08 PM

Originally Posted by JeepLab

For others following this thread, this post is directed at 40inchDozer, not JL. Its referring the the esp trac lights he has in the turn.

As for the JL steering issues, we are going to change everything to make sure we get the culprit in one sitting. I do not want to change ball joints, put the truck back together and find that it was not the problem.

Drag link
Tie rod
stabilizer
ball joints

whatever else I can unscrew and take off down there, its all going.

Hey JL. For what it's worth, I just went through my bout of death wobble and finally got it isolated and corrected 100%. Before you go changing everything, be sure to do some good research to get good parts that truly eliminate death wobble. It's too easy to replace parts (and lots of them) thinking you'll fix it, only to realize later it was one little $15 part that needed to replace, not $400 worth of parts.

For starters... Are you SURE you now have death wobble? Once a wobble, hey, it happens with heavy tires. If you start getting wobble over various pot holes, down un-even roads, when coming out of a turn, etc., then that is for sure death wobble.

I'll tell you the one thing that surprised me is just how little "sloppiness" is required in various parts to create a huge wobble. In my case, my left tie rod end on my tie rod had just about 1/8" up and down movement, combined with about 1/8" up and down movement on the tie rod end on the right side of my drag link that it caused wobble. The left tie rod end cost me $15 to replace and took about 15 minutes. The tie rod end on the drag link is not replaceable, so I ended up going with a Synergy drag link. Synergy recently came out with an updated drag link that has a grease fitting at the top, BUT, their tie rod end actually has a spring in it to keep the tie rod end nice and snug throughout it's life of wearing down, and they also tested the link with NO grease for thousands of miles to see how it would hold up. It's a pretty impressive solution. The one trick I learned to help isolate the problem is to take channel lock pliers and put it vertical so you are on top and on bottom of the tie rod ends and then try to compress the tie rod end. They should not compress AT ALL. Mine did about 1/8". You have four tie rod ends to check. The two on the drag link and the two on the tie rod bar. It takes about 1 minute to check them all like this. I found this little trick on YouTube and I can try to look up the video again if you need to see a visual of this check.

Also, another hint for you. TAKE OFF THE DAMN STABILIZER. I don't mean permanently here, just during your testing phase. The stabilizer masks tons of issues to the point that you'll have trouble trying to figure out if you resolved the issue or not. If you're Jeep is setup 100% correctly, then you actually don't need a stabilizer at all. The purpose of the stabilizer is not to prevent death wobble, it is to help with the feel of the steering so that you don't feel like the steering is super twitchy because everything is working so well. Sadly, many people will upgrade the steering stabilizer, or even go with dual stabilizers, in order to try and fix death wobble. All that does is mask it, until the stabilizers finally wear down and the wobble comes back.

Lastly... What changes to your steering system have you done to date? Have you flipped your drag link? If so, did you re-located your track bar up to keep them in parallel with each other? If not, don't go relocating the track bar up thinking you're suppose to do this with a lift. You ONLY do it when you flip the drag link. Another check of this... When you decelerate hard, or accelerate hard, does the steering wheel either try to turn left or turn right on it's own? This is a sign that your drag link and track bar are not parallel to each other. If they are absolutely in correct orientation with each other, then a hard accelerate/decelerate should not move the steering wheel one bit.

Sorry to provide so much commentary and questions if you already know this stuff. I would just hate to have possible first hand experience in getting rid of death wobble and not pass it along if I could be of some help. My final solution included a $250 Synergy drag link, a $15 tie-rod end for the left tie rod bar, and then a $20 track bar relocation bracket because the previous owner had the drag link flipped but didn't have the track bar relocated. The ultimate fixes weren't too bad (well, the removal of the OEM drag link from the pitman arm sucked) but figuring out what the fixes would be was the real problem.