[katswuy]

I have a thread here JKUR Death Wobble that chronicles my death wobble problems on our 2016 JKUR. It has been two years since this and the Jeep has driven well during that time. We recently spent a week in Moab running trails there and after returning home (about 800 miles of pavement) the wobble symptoms began again. Not death wobble, but a definite shimmy at the 47 mph speed and it seemed to be getting worse. Dang, here we go again with this thing! I ordered new track bar bushings and tie rod ends from MetalCloak and installed them. The shake was still there. I installed a new Synergy sector shaft brace bearing and nut. No improvement. I ordered new Synergy ball joints and before I put them on I thought, heck might as well take it to Discount tire and get a free balance. I had rotated the tires before with no change to the drivability, but a tire balance was just one more thing to do to eliminate causes. Drove it out from the tire shop and.........smooooth! No shake, drove it all the way home at 47 to 50 mph over bumps, tar strips and potholes....no shake! I was amazed. The tires are BFG 315/70 R 17 KO2's with about 50% tread left. There is some tread chunking from rocks and that must have thrown the balance off enough to start the shakes. It was not full blown death wobble, but this problem has been an expensive nightmare in the past to fix. Got home just in time to wave at the UPS driver that was dropping off the Synergy ball joints. Going to wait on that install. So now I have some used tie rod ends, track bar bushings and new ball joints as spares. The bushings and tie rod ends have no appreciable wear. The only looseness we could find when doing the back and forth steering wheel test was very slight movement in the sector shaft brace bearing and very slight up/down movement in the driver side upper ball joint. So, as a recommendation, check the easiest things first, tire balance being foremost on the list. Again, this was not "death wobble" but seemed to be headed in that direction.

 

[Norminator]

Glad you found success. I recently had a hint of vibration myself and solved it by grease gunning everything. That tells me I’ll be doing rod ends soon. My tires are shamefully worn, but no vibes.

 

[johncanfield]

Good recap of your almost DW situation, glad it was something simple to mitigate. What is it about DW happening around 45 MPH for almost every case?

 

[elff]

Well Done
Tire balance, IMHO, should always be the first thing to check, then start going over the steering components.
If you do it in reverse, and it's the tires, you can waste hours of time

 

[Bart C]

Had actual DW on a '12 JKUR and it made me crazy. So happy you were able to solve yours easily. A buddy kept suggesting a better steering stabilizer and I was sure it was more than that. Had an Old Man Emu one on there and figured it was good enough. Despite hours spent working with a very good Jeep repair shop we got it a little better but couldn't fix it. Finally spent about $100 on a Rancho stabilizer and it went away. Did that fix it, I don't think it really did but it prevented the initial vibration that would kick it off. So, as Elff says, start with the easy stuff like tires and steering components and go from there.

 

[zouaveherb]

Finally spent about $100 on a Rancho stabilizer and it went away. Did that fix it, I don't think it really did but it prevented the initial vibration that would kick it off.

You are correct. A stabilizer masks the underlying reasons for DW. The underlying reasons are still there and when the stabilizer wears out, the DW will come back. And because the underlying reasons were not addressed and probably got worse, when the DW does come back, it will be a lot worse. And why I am concerned that Jeep is doing the stabilizer band-aid to address the DW lawsuit.

 

[Norminator]

Lawsuit?