Almost killed myself. Time to Diagnose!

[FLIPmeOVER]

So what style is going in here? the flexy style?

which is better for our purposes?

[Timmy]

So what style is going in here? the flexy style?

which is better for our purposes?

Define "purpose." If you aren't planning on hitting any rocks, then pretty much any after market tie rod (or any other part) will more then work. Also, do you need to replace any parts right now? A lot of people just replace these parts with aftermarket parts when the OEM ones go bad, unless they really are going hard-core off roading and know they are going to be hitting things.

[JeepLab]

Define "purpose." If you aren't planning on hitting any rocks, then pretty much any after market tie rod (or any other part) will more then work. Also, do you need to replace any parts right now? A lot of people just replace these parts with aftermarket parts when the OEM ones go bad, unless they really are going hard-core off roading and know they are going to be hitting things.

I rarely hit stuff off road. one tire on one rock, the other on another, Im more concerned with the pumpkin, i figure the tie rod is pretty safe.

[Pznivy]

How did this end up? what components are going in?

[JeepLab]

How did this end up? what components are going in?

Im still up in the air on it. And my garage has been out of comission for about 2 weeks with the new floor going in.

The floor is done, so now Im going to get my focus back on the jeep.

[Yoinkers]

Have you looked at the RK stuff for steering? That stuff is heavy duty.

[FLIPmeOVER]

whats the order of operations here? Your going to start taking stuff apart right? what comes out first?

[JeepLab]

We are going to start with stabilizer, and then ball joints, work our way thru the remaining components.

[JeepLab]

Almost killed myself again last night.

Betty has been pretending nothings wrong for a few weeks. Making me think that maybe I overreacted to the time her steering pretty much failed.

God reminded me last night that she is unsafe in her current condition. I was on rt 20 in paterson NJ going north, and hit some little nothing bump. Boy, the truck lost her mind. LOL

As the front end lost its composure, I thought to myself, Just keep driving, she should right herself. Remember, im on a highway. She did not right herself. It was clear that she would not right herself. I had to stop completely for her to get a grip on herself.

My new synergy ball joints and fox stabilizer will be here on thursday.

[Timmy]

Almost killed myself again last night.

Betty has been pretending nothings wrong for a few weeks. Making me think that maybe I overreacted to the time her steering pretty much failed.

God reminded me last night that she is unsafe in her current condition. I was on rt 20 in paterson NJ going north, and hit some little nothing bump. Boy, the truck lost her mind. LOL

As the front end lost its composure, I thought to myself, Just keep driving, she should right herself. Remember, im on a highway. She did not right herself. It was clear that she would not right herself. I had to stop completely for her to get a grip on herself.

My new synergy ball joints and fox stabilizer will be here on thursday.

I know the feeling, that is scary... Yep, you have classic case of worn out ball joints, and or un-even wear on your tires. In my case, ball joint on axle side of drag link had a TINY amount of vertical play, and ball joint on drivers side track bar was same. So, two different systems reacting against each other caused the wobble.

Knowing that this was my issue, while I waited for my parts to arrive to correct it, I tested out a theory while driving. Fortunately for me I have a road that this would happen on that was a low speed back country road. The next time it happened, instead of driving straight hoping the wobble would go away, I instead steered hard left and right to try to force the wheels out of their opposing wobble. I sort of worked, the wobble went away but it was still a while for it to happen. Unfortunately, un-accelerated flight (I straight and no change in power) never seems to eliminate this when it happens.

Since replacing my ball joints I'm good, except I just got a little wobble back after I rotated my tires. It's starting to go away now that the tires are starting to wear back to what they should be. I keep checking all my ball joints over and over thinking maybe I have another one going bad, but they all feel pretty solid so far. I think I just learned a very valuable lesson on tire rotation. Rotate rear tires forward, take forward tires and cross to back. This way, your front tires are always tires that have already been on that side of the car, so the wear pattern is already more like what they will end up being versus being drastically different. Now, I didn't rotate like this because I was seeing some very goofy wear patterns on my tire and in this case, I distinctly wanted a particular tire on my left rear to try and fix some goofy feathering and miss-treading that I was seeing.