Death Wobble

[Joel]

More words of wisdom from Jeep Gandhi (taken from another forum)

What I am saying is that doing tires and alignments with finding the parts that are actually causing things to let loose is a crap shoot.

Death wobble works like this.

The worse your tires and alignment, the easier DW will initiate. And vice versa.

So, with great tires and alignment, parts can wear for a lot longer before DW starts to initiate.

If you have bad tires and alignment, some parts need to barely wear before they loose the ability to keep DW under check.

It is all compromise in the end. If you insist on running things like hard to balance tires, cheap steel rims, and compromised alignment specs, you need to be prepared to go through front end parts and deal with death wobble more then the average joe.

You mileage is completely irrelevant. One severe instance of death wobble can turn a brand new part into a destroyed part. Unit bearings take about the worst beating from DW.

One hard steadfast rule of DW is that the slower it initiates, the easier it is to find.

I have perfect alignment specs on my wifes jeep, and a tire and rim combo that run so true they don’t need weights. Her rig still goes into DW anytime the track bar heim I have at the frame end loosens off. Luckily I know the rig well enough to feel it coming, and catch it before it tears stuff apart.

I have a stock xj with 300k on all the stock front end parts. That entire front end is trashed but with small, well balanced tires, DW is still holding off. Although it does get a little shimmy here and there, all I would have to do is throw 33’s on that thing for 5 minutes and I could tear the whole front out it initiated DW at will.

A rig with a tight front end does not DW. The shops you are at are missing something. The worst tires in the world will wobble like all hell through the 35-45mph hour range, but if the front end is tight, they will stay under control enough that DW does not kick in.

In the past 4 years I have easily diagnosed, and repaired 50 plus cases of DW in driveway, garage, at trail heads, and club meetings. Since learning how to do it, I have never had a front end I couldn’t get to run right regardless of the tires and alignment. Including insane configurations like 37” unbalanced pitbulls on mangled steel rims under an XJ with 8 inches of lift on short arms.

Good luck with your search.