Saturday pre-Crawl prep issues....

PacificEd

PacificEd

NAXJA Member
NAXJA Member
Location
Middle Tennessee
I went outside to the shop to work on the XJ. At 8 am it was hot and humid and I was sweating like a pig.

I removed the A/C components from my XJ from the firewall to condenser. The dryer, compressor, condenser and everything is now in the shop floor and I installed an HO A/C bracket and an HO A/C delete pulley. Works like a champ.

I have a lot more room to add a tranny or power steering cooler (or both) to the front of the radiator now. I can also add a pusher fan too.

I took the XJ for a spin and now it seems like I have a new issue totally unrelated to anything I've messed with. It is a vibration coming from the passenger front wheel. There seems to be some resistance so I figured the wheel bearing may be going out. I got it home and jacked it up and everything seems nice and solid. Weird. I'm not sure where to go from here.
 
Ok I'll look at that.

The joints in the axle looked good and everything would spin. I'm going to remove the tire and do a closer examination of the brakes, unit bearing and ball joints.

I was worn out and sweaty, I had to call it a day. I may go back out tonight after it cools down a little.
 
Did you notice any smell when you were driving? Was the Jeep pulling one way or the other when you braked?

I had the driver's side caliper start to seize up on my and when it was not working properly I could smell the burning of the brakes and the Jeep would pull passengers upon braking. I slapped on some new calipers and it fixed my drag completely.
 
How's your tire?
 
I feel some mild drag but no pulling or anything like that. I need to pull it apart and inspect it.

Tires are fairly new BFG KM2's. I think I might check the alignment just to be sure.

I did install a front swaybar for road driving but surely this wouldn't cause this issue. This is the first "long trip" out, about 40 minutes each way.
 
I removed the shields sometime back. I did go out and check the caliper and everything seems to be fine there. cleaned them up a little. We'll see what happens.
 
I drove the XJ to town and back tonight. No change but I'm thinking it is something in the rear end now.

The vibes are only when it is under acceleration. When I let off the gas they basically go away (like when I'm coasting). I'm going to check the rear axles, thinking maybe I have a bad rear wheel bearing. Am I on track here?
 
If it's only doing it under acceleration it may be a driveshaft u-joint. If it was a wheel bearing I wouldn't think it would change whether or not it was accelerating other than speeding up/slowing down.
Possibly pinion bearing but I'm still more inclined to think u-joint.
 
We had rebuilt both driveshafts with new u-joints last year and they have maybe 3 wheeling trips on them.

I'm going to jack up everything this week and see if I can find anything that feels out of place. I sure hope I can figure it out.
 
I sure wish I was at home working on this. I hate having to wait to get home as my mind is racing trying to solve this before the Crawl.
 
At least you are home to work on it. I'm stuck in Florida most of the week.
 
I found the problem so I feel better now.

10444518_10202792190788246_7751747591250737295_n.jpg


I said that both driveshafts had new u-joints and I was mistaken. The front shaft has new joints and is tight. The rear is the driveshaft that was installed when the 8.8 went in. We had a wrenchfest in June of last year and I know we rebuilt two driveshafts (well Cottontail did). One went in the front but I have no clue where the other went. I know we did two because I had to drive to O'Reilly's and Autozone in Woodbury, TN and I bought all the u-joints both stores had in stock. Maybe that was the spare shaft we loaded in High2by's rig as the spare for Moab?

Anyways, problem found and repair underway.
 
043500 said:
If it's only doing it under acceleration it may be a driveshaft u-joint. If it was a wheel bearing I wouldn't think it would change whether or not it was accelerating other than speeding up/slowing down.
Possibly pinion bearing but I'm still more inclined to think u-joint.
Click to expand...

Winner winner chicken dinner!!
 
Yeah, pretty sure I never rebuilt that one!!
 
Glad it was something simple. As for the "other" driveshaft that Dirk rebuilt....yep, it's in the white Jeep, which was a good thing since I broke one on the trail in Moab. :D
 
I should have never started working on this thing. Now I want to upgrade everything.
 
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