I vote lie

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/jeep-wrangler-death-wobble-fix


I tried for months to get rid of death wobble and steering damper wasn’t it. But thats in an XJ...

jcnoble said:

https://www.foxnews.com/auto/jeep-wrangler-death-wobble-fix


I tried for months to get rid of death wobble and steering damper wasn’t it. But thats in an XJ...

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You must be new to Chrysler factory "fixes." Back in the day when the magnum based trucks were new they had issue with pinging. Initially their diagnosis was "cross-talk on the plug wires" and the solution was to reroute the plug wires to fix the issue. After that didn't fix the issue their solution was to write the infamous magnum death flash, which pulled a ton of timing out of the motor and made it dog slow.

The true root cause of the issue was that the intake manifold has a gasket on the bottom that would leak and suck oil and vapors into the intake which would cause the pinging.

20 years and they still haven't fixed it!? I find it funny the brand new $30k JL's still have this problem. Should have bought an XJ bro!

Greenspan said:

20 years and they still haven't fixed it!? I find it funny the brand new $30k JL's still have this problem. Should have bought an XJ bro!

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or 60 $500 XJs!

On dad's JK it ended up being the 3* of caster it had from the factory. Upped that to 7* and it went away.

I find it laughable that they're blaming the steering damper. The damper is not there to prevent vibrations and shaking. It's there to damp the steering. If you have true wobble, then you have a problem with compliance in the sytem (shot bushings, rod ends, overly flexy tire sidewalls, etc) and an alignment issue.

Greenspan said:

20 years and they still haven't fixed it!? I find it funny the brand new $30k JL's still have this problem. Should have bought an XJ bro!

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Vehicles with live axles have had to deal with it for at least my 60yrs !!!

That's pretty funny. Sounds about like the factory "fix" for the injector heatsoak issue on cylinder 3/4 00+... "stick a little fiberglass+foil condom on the injector, it'll make the problem go away till it's out of warranty hopefully"

I think this is simply an inherint problem with the design of our suspension and the push for bigger and bigger tires has simply got the design to the point that the resonance frequency for the front end is now at lower highway speeds.

Could be as simple as adding some weight somewhere in the system or changing the stiffness of the sidewall of the supplied tire.

devildog0 said:

I think this is simply an inherint problem with the design of our suspension and the push for bigger and bigger tires has simply got the design to the point that the resonance frequency for the front end is now at lower highway speeds.

Could be as simple as adding some weight somewhere in the system or changing the stiffness of the sidewall of the supplied tire.

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Exactly - there are too many factors that can set off a death wobble - a lift, larger tires, or some other innocuous change can cause it. A worn/defective steering damper is just one part of that puzzle.

On my XJ the death wobble was caused by worn out front suspension parts. I replaced *every* moving part that could wear in the front suspension and that took care of it.

devildog0 said:

I think this is simply an inherint problem with the design of our suspension and the push for bigger and bigger tires has simply got the design to the point that the resonance frequency for the front end is now at lower highway speeds.

Could be as simple as adding some weight somewhere in the system or changing the stiffness of the sidewall of the supplied tire.

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pretty much. In fact, my 91 MJ had horrific deathwobble that I had to continuously ward off by repetitively swerving 1/8 steering wheel turn to the right about every 5 seconds at any speed above 40 when I parked it, with 285/75R16 BFG ATs on it. 5 years later I resurrected it and put 33x12.50R15 General Grabbers on it (not my first choice, but needed some cheap tires for a Gambler 500 run and they were $150 on my local facebook truck parts group) and now it'll do up to 75 with no deathwobble. Would probably go faster but that's about all the rope I'm foolhardy enough to give it.

The same truck had deathwobble so bad it snapped the passenger motor mount bolts when it was stock, and had zero deathwobble after I lifted it and installed the BFG ATs back in 2011.

OK, I'll be the one to point it out: in the linked youtube video, the crotch graphic on that woman's pants is off center. I don't think that's the cause of the death wobble, but then again I'm no automotive engineer, so what the hell do I know?