Is it death wobble? (1 Viewer)

[NewbieMcNewster]

Can we take a moment to recognize the joints on that Jeep in the linked video were toast after only 21k miles. Hahaha

Hey now. I paused it while he was doing his impression of death wobble, and the joints made it a whole 22.5K miles, apparently. So given that I have about 215K on the LX, I guess I'm doing about 10x better!

In case anyone was waiting on updates, I'm going to have to get the truck to a shop once my other car is legally drivable on a daily basis again, and once I get it looked into by people who can disassemble a bunch of stuff on the front end, I'll report back to the class with the findings.

Alternatively, anyone in the North Dallas area want to come over and teach me some stuff in exchange for beer, appreciation, and some amount of money less than the shop would charge me?

 

[eimkeith]

bookmarking for later.

 

[NewbieMcNewster]

Alright, so... Sigh. The truck just spent a month in the shop. It took them pretty much all of that time just to give me a "diagnosis", and about one day to do the actual work. After all that time, they just took the spacers off the truck to fix the death wobble, and then told me that while it was in it also needed all new brakes.

I'm a bit disappointed, just because it doesn't really feel like I got the problem addressed. Has there been death wobble since bringing it home? No. So that's good. But they claimed to take a look at all the front bushings (including the one diagnosed here as being completely shot, per an above picture), and said that nothing actually needed to be replaced. And the fact that they didn't seem able to replicate the death wobble for themselves doesn't give me a ton of confidence that they looked at everything that might cause it. I didn't have death wobble until about a year after putting the spacers on, so it just seems questionable to me that that would have been the problem. Removing them does seem to have fixed things, but now I wonder if removing them is actually the band-aid on another problem, just by reducing stresses that little bit...

Anyway, I'll update further if there are continued problems or if the wobble rears its head again. For now I'm just happy to have the rig back, and hopefully I can get out on the trails again soon. I've just found out about the overland trails through Big Bend, and now I'm very curious to make a trip out of that at some point when the weather cools...

For anyone wondering, the shop was Dajda's Auto Care in North Richland Hills, TX. They're LC specialists (I'd be surprised if they're not on here, actually), and I've gone there for things in the past and been pleased, but this time it just seemed iffy and the communication was really, really poor.

 

[smritte]

Death Wobble can be odd at times. So many things can set it off. Never forget, death wobble starts out as a side to side movement. Your panhard controls side to side movement. The longer the problem exists, the more items death wobble tears up (bushings, ball joints, steering....). Also very few people diagnose it properly due to how many things can set it off. If you have only seen tires out of balance amplified by spacers, that is what you think will cure everything.
Always start with new bushings, no play in steering, bearings....
These are things that need to be kept maintained anyway. Personally, if you would have been at my shop, I would have made you replace all the bushings just because they were old.
Most of the people here have owned different types of solid axle vehicles and seen about everything that can cause it.
BTW, did you replace your tires before you took it to the shop?

 

[NewbieMcNewster]

Death Wobble can be odd at times. So many things can set it off. Never forget, death wobble starts out as a side to side movement. Your panhard controls side to side movement. The longer the problem exists, the more items death wobble tears up (bushings, ball joints, steering....). Also very few people diagnose it properly due to how many things can set it off. If you have only seen tires out of balance amplified by spacers, that is what you think will cure everything.
Always start with new bushings, no play in steering, bearings....
These are things that need to be kept maintained anyway. Personally, if you would have been at my shop, I would have made you replace all the bushings just because they were old.
Most of the people here have owned different types of solid axle vehicles and seen about everything that can cause it.
BTW, did you replace your tires before you took it to the shop?

The tires are almost brand new, they went on just a couple of weeks before I took the rig into the shop. But the death wobble was happening before they were replaced (and the new tires were road force balanced when installed). I'm considering going to another shop and asking them to take a look at all the bushings up front to let me know what they think. If I could get a root problem nailed down and then reinstall the spacers, I'd like to do that just for aesthetics.

Can you tell me what you think it should cost to do all the front bushings? Or at least the panhard bushings? If I go to another shop, I don't want to end up paying way too much for it, since I've just dropped some real coin on the brakes (and I do believe that calipers and such needed to be replaced after 216K miles, so I'm not complaining about having them done).

Unrelated, but I thought it was funny that the shop suggested that cross drilled and slotted brake rotors would really make the thing stop on a dime... unless I'm seriously mistaken (most of my brake knowledge comes from my tracked M3, not the 80), those are upgrades meant to allow the brakes to cool themselves more quickly and prevent overheating from extreme use - they don't actually make you stop faster in typical driving situations. But if anyone knows a real reason to do it on a rig other than a small bit of visual cachet, I'm curious.

 

[smritte]

Sorry, couldn't tell you what shop rates are today. I've been out of the shop for a while (semi retired). Someone else may chime in.
Your pretty much correct on the rotor. Brake pad friction material is your braking. You most likely already know about fade so there's that.

As a tech, verifying the problem is essential. Knowing how things work seems to be secondary now a days. If you removed a big part of what was setting it off by changing the tires, its possible you have made it better until the next item sets it off due to worn bushings.
I have access to a nice road force balancer. When i went to rebalance my tires a few mounts ago, I saw two tires shaking badly during the balance. It seems I managed to break down the inner parts of the tire running them with 15 psi off road.
I rebalanced them because i developed death wobble. I replaced my panhard bushings and replaced my tires. I could feel a bit off shaking in my steering after the bushing replacement. New tires and all is good.

 

[ChiYota]

As a tech, verifying the problem is essential.

This is huge - I'd usually take test drives with my customers when trying to figure stuff like this out. Depends on how much time they have (and you I guess). I don't know how much that'll help, but some food for thought.

Good luck, brother!