XJ Wanders/sways

[Midwestheep]

So have been having wandering issues, more noticeable at highway speeds. Try to correct it and it feels like body is rolling as well. Not sure if it’s the leaf springs when the compress and decompress cause rear steering. Or if it’s something else or if it’s normal.

A little about the XJ.
-1 ton swap with high steer and truss
-Custom 3 link with all new hardware except for the 3link crossmember.
-Front Bilstien 5100 with new springs
-Rear sterling 10.5 with ubolt eliminator kit, with Fox 2.0 shocks.
-steering linkage and panhard bar are very close to parallel. They are unequal lengths so I do get bump steer. Not to worried about that.
- Has been completely aligned with rear as well, no dogwalking. Also in accordance to the axles not the vehicle.
-rides on 37’s they are aired down as the vehicle is pretty light, so good contact with the road.
-also rebuilt the steering gear, might need adjusting though. But no slop.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Ol Blue]

Has it been professionally aligned? If not, you should start there.

What is the caster set at? Sounds like you need more.

What tire pressure are you running?

 

[RCP Phx]

Put some numbers to all this, take a pic of your steering set-up!

 

[Midwestheep]

Yes, it was done by a professional. It was at 4.2 deg.

Tire pressure at 28psi, anything more I’ll be riding on the center 3” of the tire.

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[Ol Blue]

I'd try adding in some more caster by shortening the upper and/or lengthening the lowers, if your control arms are adjustable. I'd try for around 6 degrees with a bare minimum of 5.

Everytime I've gotten an alignment on the XJ they will only touch the toe and straighten the steering wheel since that what was all that was adjustable from the factory. They wanted to charge an hour or two of labor to adjust the control arms...hard to find good help these days. What I did was bought one of those 3 year unlimited alignments and did whatever various suspension geometry tinkering at home and had them do alignments along the way to check everything was in the range I wanted and to know the exact caster that worked best for my set up. 6 felt best to me. Over 6.5-7 degrees or so I hated how it steered and felt twitchy at low speeds. Count the turns you adjust the control arms so you can reverse it if you don't like it.

 

[Evan03]

I'd wonder about link seperation at axle end. For 37" tires 11 plus if seperation is 8" it would wallow around and also brake dive.

 

[Midwestheep]

I'd try adding in some more caster by shortening the upper and/or lengthening the lowers, if your control arms are adjustable. I'd try for around 6 degrees with a bare minimum of 5.

Everytime I've gotten an alignment on the XJ they will only touch the toe and straighten the steering wheel since that what was all that was adjustable from the factory. They wanted to charge an hour or two of labor to adjust the control arms...hard to find good help these days. What I did was bought one of those 3 year unlimited alignments and did whatever various suspension geometry tinkering at home and had them do alignments along the way to check everything was in the range I wanted and to know the exact caster that worked best for my set up. 6 felt best to me. Over 6.5-7 degrees or so I hated how it steered and felt twitchy at low speeds. Count the turns you adjust the control arms so you can reverse it if you don't like it.

I’ll try adding more caster and see if that helps.

 

[Midwestheep]

I'd wonder about link seperation at axle end. For 37" tires 11 plus if seperation is 8" it would wallow around and also brake dive.

Can you expand a little more on what you mean please?

 

[maxbraketorque]

5-5.5 deg of caster and just a tiny amount of toe-in. My experience is that even a tiny amount of toe-out makes an XJ or WJ a lot more darty.

 

[Evan03]

This will help.
Everyone should study it.

BillaVista.com-Suspension Link Construction Tech Article by BillaVista

 

[Evan03]

I do agree 4deg isnt much positive castor if pinion angle allows dont be afraid to go to 7deg.

Also those look like thosd weird tires with funky center tread chalk them to get air adjustd to nearly 100% tread width down youl probly end up around 18 15 ish psi