Nevada Backroaders

So, I had my tires rotated at Ted Wiens the other day, and got the pleasure of experiencing the Death Wobble. Between the speeds of 45 and 47mph, the steering wheel had a mind of its own, wobbling back and forth in a distressing fashion.

I'd never heard of it before, but Darrell knew exactly what it was, as did Tom when I told him about it. Darrell rotated the tires again to get rid of it. He explained it to me, and I basically understand it.

I was just wondering how common is it? How many of you have had Death Wobble?

Have never had it in D.D. but did get it in the Red Jeep after I lifted it and stuck the 30" tires on it. Like in your case i rotated the tires and it went buh bye. A real eye opener and pucker monent isn't it?

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1994 jeep yj wrangler-"d.d." []lllllll[]
Retired Trail Boss and Website Director
Founder of Uncle Brad's Misguided Children
NVBROFC
Re-located from my beloved Mojave to Texas. Where did all the mountains go???

Both of our Grand Cherokee's have this problem too!

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The first rule of Intelligent Tinkering is: save all the parts!

Never had it. But then again, I play it conservative and always stick to stock size rubber, the way the engineers designed my vehicles ... Once in a while I get a vibration immediately after rotating tires, but it goes away soon.

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D.A. Wright
~When You Live in Nevada, "just down the road" is anywhere in the line of sight within the curvature of the earth.

In this case it's probably not really the over size tire being the issue, but the way it was originally balanced. You can take a perfectly balanced wheel, mount up and spin a 100 different tires of the same brand and size and find you need to use anywhere from 0 to 25 ounces of lead weight to balance them. General use tires (for us common folks) are not really produced at a high standard, no matter what they say. If you have a wheel/tire with a lot of weight on it on the front end, you're going to experience some bad things. Bias ply tires are horrific in this manner as they constantly change over time, heck even every morning but radials tend to wear true as to how they are balanced, though I have seen a few needing a rebalance over time.

Not too many people do it anymore because they either don't care enough or don't know, but I have a friend who runs a major chain tire store and it is common for him to mount a new tire, balance it, break it down and rotate the tire on the wheel and rebalance it again to try to keep the weight to a minimum. I've seen him pull a brand new tire back off and get another one if that didn't work, just to try and get a low weight balance. Of course this is if the wheel is pretty good from the start. The funny thing, I was taught to do this by my father who ran a service station, and my auto shop teacher in HS as well. But I rarely ever see anyone do it anymore. In fact if you ask, they usually blow you off claiming it's your bad wheel or that the correct procedure doesn't work, etc. etc. So they just throw lead at the tire till the machine says it's good and out the door you go. I've watched guys mount up tires, balance them, and be sure to put the best ones up front just to try to avoid the issue. In fact when I last got my BFG's on my Scout, the guy put so much weight (inside stick on type) on one of the wheels, it balled up against the caliper and locked the wheel up when he tried to back it out of the stall. Turns out it had like 35 ounces of lead stacked 3 rows high. Needless to say, all four tires ended up being redone, coincidently the "correct way" by the store manager.


So yes, I have experienced it in various vehicles at various times. Every time though it was due to either a bad wheel (bent) or an improperly balanced tire.

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All Jeep trails had to first be Scouted.

1978 IH Scout II Lifted, locked, blah,blah,blah.
2008 Jeep Grand Cherokee, Her car.
1992 Ford F350 XLT 4x4

I know of 2 people who didnot have their toe in correct and that caused it , and 2 that were caused by their track bar. Rex

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Nth degree 6" lift, JK 44's,35's

Sustained oscillation has two necessary components: An underdamped second order or higher system and a positive feedback mechanism. An example of an underdamped second order system is a spring and mass system where the mass can bob up and down (oscillate) when hanging from a spring.

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08 TRD Taco: SSMica Xcab 4WD 4.0 V6 6sp OC-TO
IVD: Coilovers, UCAs, remote res shocks & 3AAL Pack+TSB leafs
265/75r16 BFG KM2s+TRD alloys, BudBuilt Skids
ARB bumper, X9, IPFxsd900, DeMello sliders, AP rear plate bumper

Thanks for all the comments! After some tinkering around, Ted Wiens got it fixed. Turns out that one component of the problem was my tires had too much air in them. This has caused some irregular tire wear, so when the tires were rotated, things got a bit squirrely.

Dawn: I had it very bad about 10k miles after I had it lifted. Still in warranty. Jeep tried everything. Original tires, balanced,track- bar,tire pressure. They fixed it by changing my lower control arm. Hope it's fixed for you

Frank

I was still getting the wobble off and on. It appears that I need a drop Pitman arm. When the jeep was lifted by the previous owners (4" lift), the pitman arm wasn't changed. That put everything at a wonky angle. I wasn't getting the wobble previously, because my steering stabilizer (I think that's the right term - it's the thing that looks like a shock absorber running parallel to the ground) was seized up (probably because of the wonky angles), and wasn't allowing anything to wobble. When Wiens fixed the stabilizer, that's when the wobble started.

I get the arm replaced on Wednesday. We'll see what happens next.

I'm sure learning a lot about jeep parts. It's all very interesting. A bit expensive, but interesting.

Dawn: the mechs at 4 wheel parts fixed the problem after asking me the kind of lift I had on it.( 2in Terra Flex). Can't remember the mechs name, but if thing don't work out for you at Wiens , it might be worth a call to 4WPart

FRANK