Why Do Jeeps Get Death Wobble?

what is up guys welcome back to a new video my name is Stephen this is my 2000 Jeep Cherokee XJ and if you guys ever owned one of these things You' probably experienced something called death wobble if you haven't it looks a little something like this obviously that can be very terrifying while you're just driving cruising down the road having a good day and your steering wheel starts violently shaking like that believe it or not it's actually one of the most common issues with these old Jeep Cherokees however it's not only Cherokees it's basically any Jeep um even if you don't have it lifted you can experience death wobble in my case this Jeep is lifted on 33x 12 1/2 in tires only about 3 in of lift surprisingly I've never had death wobble with this Jeep in particular but other Jeeps that I've purchased in the past have had death wobble the most common cause of death wobble is going to be these bad boys your tires your tires can cause death wobble for multiple reasons one being they're not balanced properly and if you have an unbalanced tire and you're driving down the highway that speeds over 55 you're definitely going to experience some type of shake however death wobble is when your steering wheel really shakes violently and aggressively and it doesn't stop until you slow down and then it'll all of a sudden smooth out so if you're experiencing death wobble the first thing you should check is your tires visually look at them are they wearing correctly are they wearing evenly so if you notice that your tires are wearing more on the inside right here that would indicate that your tires have negative camber and if it's wearing more towards the outside of the wheel then you have positive camber which can be corrected with an alignment right off the bat if you guys get new tires I recommend getting an alignment if not maybe every year uh I know where I live we have big potholes they can throw your alignment off real quick just by hitting a few potholes if your tires are uneven and they're not balanced properly you can definitely experience death wobble however that's not always the case it's not always as simple as tires I actually had an XJ once we lifted it drove it down the highway instantly got death wobble and it was still on the factory tires which were a lot smaller and as soon as we put some 33s on there with brand new tires properly balanced the death wobble went away sometimes it can be that simple but not all the time one thing that's definitely not causing you death wobble is this guy right here this is a steering stabilizer and a lot of rookie guys with Jeeps including myself uh thought you know if it's a steering stabilizer that's probably going to cause death wobble if it goes bad well believe it or not some people don't even run these it's basically just a shock that's on your drag link connected to your axle on the passenger side now you can change that it won't hurt but it's definitely not going to fix your death wobble if that's what you got what can be a cause of death wobble is this bolt right here this bolt connects your track bar and the passenger side and goes up to the driver's side of the unibody rail this bolt nine times out of 10 will be your cause of death wobble what happens is this hole will actually wallow out and turn into more of an oval shape and it can throw your whole trck bar out of out of alignment when it starts to shake and it'll just throw your whole front end into a death wobble so if your tires are good go ahead and take your track bar bolt out and check the hole where the bolt goes through because that could be walled out causing you a lot of issues one thing you definitely don't want to do when you're trying to find the source of your death wobble is just to throw Parts at it I've done that before and it can add up and sometimes not even fix your problem a lot of people will just say okay I'm going to get a new track bar I'm going to get a new drag link going to get a new tie rod without troubleshooting something you're just throwing Parts at it wasting money and yeah at the end of the day you get new parts but a lot of us aren't made of money that's why we drive these first thing you can do when you get death wobble is get home just Jack the front end up and take the tires wiggle them left and right and then up and down sometimes you can use a crowbar and pride the tire up and down and that'll indicate worn ball joints bad wheel bearing and I'm not sure if those will cause death wobble but I don't see why not when you lift a Jeep like this that's not meant to be lifted you're changing the geometry of everything from your drive shaft angles to the whole geometry of your steering you want to make sure everything is properly aligned you also want to double check and triple check your bolts after installing a lift kit after driving it around for a little bit you want to go ahead and bolt check everything because one loose bolt can throw everything off and cause you some serious vibrations or death wobble another common misconception is people always just assume just because it's a brick on Wheels and it's with big tires then it's going to ride like absolute crap well that's not true at all this Jeep right here can actually do 80 90 mph down the highway perfectly straight now given I need an alignment it kind of pulls to the right a little bit but there's absolutely no shimmy in the wheel no death wobble of course these things are going to be loud as hell going down the road but that's okay it's a Jeep at the end of the day this can apply to really any Jeep jks tjs JK used they're all big boxes on Wheels so you're going to experience some type of rough ride over the duration of the the ownership of your Jeep the more you drive it more you get to shake things down and find its weak spots fix them and upgrade them and after a while basically everything in the front end is going to be replaced anyway um after you lift it you can leave the stock steering but you know like me for in my case I have factory steering on this been wanting to upgrade it for a little while but to be honest with you there's a lot of other things that I'd rather do than upgrade the steering as you can tell I need a bump around this thing too real bad but that's in the shop right now going getting fix and getting painted so we're going to throw that on probably in a couple weeks when it gets finished so just to recap tires check the tread wear balance them rotate them it's definitely not your stabilizer causing you death wobble you can replace it if you want but that's probably not your issue check that track bar bolt where the where the bolt goes through the hole that hole tends to wallow out and turn into an oval which can cause your track bar To Shimmy side to side giving you death wobble and while you're under the Jeep you definitely want to check your ball joints cuz those are very crucial if you have a bad ball joint it could kill you or someone else on the road I feel like sometimes when you own a lift a Jeep like this it's it's a big responsibility to make sure everything's safe because it's not only your life it's everybody else's life on the road so make sure your front end is tight you know I like to jack this Jeep up every time I do an oil change and shake the wheels and see if I can see any visual problems with worn U joints uh that's not going to cause you death wobble but these are just things that you should just check anyway cuz you're under there looking at everything you want to make sure your tie rod ends are good your ball joints are good your track bar mount as well that's something that I I missed um sometimes your track bar Where It Bolts to the uni body on the driver's side here depending on what track bar you have the bracket um sits on the unibody Rail and I believe there's three or four bolts those bolts can come loose too and that's why I stress bolt checking everything especially when you go LIF a vehicle like this you want to make sure everything's Tight cuz if it's not tight it's going to throw one thing off and then cause more issues down the road for you when a simple bolt check takes like 10 minutes and you can have peace of mind knowing everything in your front end is tight yeah I'd say the number one thing would be tires make sure your tires are good A lot of people don't realize how big of a difference a well balanced um Tire can handle down the road compared to an old worn out tire and it's all and it's not always something you can see too sometimes it's out of balance sometimes s your Rim can be bent also real quick guys if you guys are interested I have hoodies now available t-shirts I'm going to be coming out with some hats soon so link is in the description go check out the website Cooper sself a hoodie or t-shirt these come in different colors and to be honest with you the quality is pretty good I'm nice and warm out here it's like 25° out today so hop down below check out the shop pick yourself out something nice just little walkthrough around this Jeep I get a lot of questions about this Jeep um it's actually a 3 and 1/2 in Rubicon Express lift and I just recently replaced these leaf springs here so I got brand new leaf springs fairly new shocks I run billstein 5100s um I've ran Rubicon Express shocks as well they're not bad but personally I love the ride of these billin 5100s this Jeep also has a slip yolk Eliminator kit if you guys don't know what that does is replaces your slip yolk and it it basically just relocates it down there uh it doesn't eliminate it cuz your slip Yol on a factory transfer case is is right here but this little piece is a slip yolk Eliminator and you get a custom drive shaft and you get a much better ride out of your XJ by just having that I mean it's not cheap but it's well worth it for sure I ran a long time without a slip Yol Eliminator kit and I went through U-joints drive shaft U-joints probably every few months because of the aggressive pinion angle was just wearing the U-joints out and that's something you want to do basically as soon as you lift your Jeep a lot of times you you can get away with uh spacers between the crossmember and the unibody here I'll show you that so if you want to be cheap like I was for a little while you can get these little pucks that sit between the bolt uh the crossmember and the unibody what that does is it drops at about an inch and a half maybe 2 in and that gives you a better angle on your drive shaft which gives you a little bit better of a ride but to be honest with you that's just a Band-Aid and it works you know it makes you ride a little bit bit better but for me personally I went through U-joints like crazy and ever since I did the syy kit I believe it's rough country uh drive shaft to that I got ever since I did that I haven't replaced a single ujoint and it's been about two years now so I highly recommend that anytime you lift a Jeep doesn't matter if it's a Cherokee um or a Wrangler just get something and dial in your drive line geometry like I was saying earlier with the front end your geometry when you lift it you want to make sure that the Jeep thinks it's sitting at factory height and that's what adding an syy kit does it basically tricks a Jeep thinking it's a factory height it's not lifted on big tires which allows you to drive down the road without going all over the place and without crazy vibrations when your drive shaft vibrates you know it trust me this Jeep actually just hit 352,000 Mi and at this point I believe I've replaced just about everything um besides the front bumper you know once this on once the Bumper's on it little it'll look a little more complete but yeah as of now I've done basically everything that you can do to an XJ U for preventative maintenance obviously I still have the front U Dana 30 which is an okay axle but if you want to actually build an XJ you want to get um Dana 44 Dana 60s you know for the rear too but I have the Chrysler 8 and a qu which is a pretty good axle it's a little bit stronger than the d35 which is a bad axle if you have that swap it out with a 8 and a qu and and you'll be much more happier knowing that you're not going to grenade the thing the first day you take it Offroad yeah 352,000 Mi I've done a heater core I've replaced basically everything in the coolant system which is another thing that uh the xjs lack is a proper uh cooling system these things are notorious for overheating and sometimes if you don't have something as simple as a fan shroud it can cause you to run a little bit warmer but for a Jeep with 352,000 Mi uh you're going to run into a lot of issues that aren't necessarily mechanical and by that I mean rust and rot where I'm from Western Massachusetts uh we get a lot of road salt not necessarily snow but every time it gets wet and icy here they like to use a boatload of salt which basically just destroys uh any vehicle that you drive on the road perfect example right here these xjs come with plastic pieces where they just like kind of sit on there there's there clips here and and they they rust on there with two bolts uh what that does is it traps moisture dirt salt anything on the road and it just corrodes that whole area and in my case you can see this is a previous owner um he did a patch I'm not really sure why he didn't decide to just cut this and fold that side under fold the other side under and then you can get some body armor to put over it but anyway he cut out a section of rot and as you can tell here it's starting to come back back and it's only a matter of time uh before this rots away completely again you know I did what I can put some paint over it but besides it looking hideous uh it can definitely spread too if you don't address that rust it'll definitely spread to your floor pan or this part right here uh it's notorious for rotting away at an XJ mine's starting to a little bit but it's got some time before I have to address it same thing with this side here this one's a little bit bit more pretty but it wasn't like this a couple months ago so what happened here is this was rotted way up uh to the trunk floor pan if you see on the underside that's a new floor well it's a patch um what happens there is when that rots out all the rough spreads and it can rot your shackle Mount out and this whole area can become rotted and can actually cause your leaf spring shackle to shoot itself up in the back trunk there which obviously is not good so in my case I had that patched and just put a piece of metal over here with some rivets painted it called it a day it's not a show Jeep I basically just drive this Jeep for whenever I want um mainly in snowstorms and I my days off guys drive a Jeep like this you know that the gas mileage is pretty bad and that's something that you just kind of have to deal with especially when you put big tires on it like this there's a lot of things you can do like clean the throttle body uh upgrade your injectors just make sure you change your spark plugs clean your air filter but there's only so much you can do and these things still probably get about 14 maybe 15 uh miles per gallon if you're if you're up on your stuff but for the most part you can't spec expect uh good gas mileage on a Jeep like [Music] this [Music] [Music] he oh

Channel: StevenNewell

Views: 2,426

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Id: OWuVwHUW6Lw

Length: 15min 1sec (901 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 15 2024