Lessons learned

[mrblaine]

I am by no means a Death Wobble expert, but I have solved many cases over the phone and the resultant feedback from the owners of these rigs has been most heartwarming.

Then William shows up with horrible DW. I do the usual and tell him that the first thing that has to be done is to remove the tires from the equation somehow.

He gets them balanced with zero effect on the frequency or severity of DW.

We did have several conversations about tripping over dollars to pick up pennies. This would be relative to spending budgeted monies on trivial items such as tire balancing.

So, we then proceed to the next step in a DW case, and that is to ascertain if any suspension components are worn, loose, or out of adjustment.

We replace the trackbar, steering stabilizer, draglink TRE at the pitman, steering box 2 times, have an alignment done. Set the caster as good as we can get it. Change the toe from positive to neutral to negative.

We check the steering column, intermediate shaft, intermediate shaft carrier bearing, and the final set of steering shaft u-joints. We have gone over the front end of this jeep with a fine tooth comb and were only able to slightly affect the frequency and severity of his DW.

I had lost all faith in my abilities to fix, diagnose, or even the desire to be near a jeep with DW. Absolutely nothing I did, tried, or touched on that jeep changed a thing. Totally frustrating.

Yesterday, we all pitch in and perform extraordinary amounts of mods to William's jeep to get him up on 35's.

New springs, new belly-up, hook up the ARB's, install an overhead console and wire in the switches, protect all the air lines, and send him on his way. Guess what? No more DW.

It was the crappy steel rims and the BFG's all along. He found this out on the way to my house on the new MT/R's on the new aluminum wheels. It made sense to drive up on them and do the lift. No offroading, so little danger of rubbing. All is well now and I still hate cheap steel rims.