'08 Wrangler Jeep Death Wobble Issue

[sammandtj]

I'm having an issue with my jeep. Its giving me a death wobble at 80km (70 if its wet) in the front end. It has a 3 1/2 inch lift from rough country, Steering stabilizer, Had 2 alignments done to tighten the front end. Anyone have any ideas what I need to be looking at? Any ideas would be amazing thanks!
Samm

[4x4grey88]

Originally Posted by sammandtj

I'm having an issue with my jeep. Its giving me a death wobble at 80km (70 if its wet) in the front end. It has a 3 1/2 inch lift from rough country, Steering stabilizer, Had 2 alignments done to tighten the front end. Anyone have any ideas what I need to be looking at? Any ideas would be amazing thanks!
Samm

The first thing I would do is look at you steering while someone turns the steering wheel back and forth. Times you will see the obvious spot of something loose. If everything is tight, then check you differential angle and toe-in. After installing a lift the axle angle changes.

(This is a write up from a friend)

Set axles on jack stands so you have room to work.

Get a digital angle finder or a really accurate level. Start by leveling both front and rear axles on the stands, hopefully your driveway or garage is fairly level so this is not too difficult.

Once you have the axles level, then level the rig or check it for level. This can be as easy as jacking up under the doors with a floor jack a minor amount or pulling down to a fixed point on the ground with a ratchet strap to the frame.

When you get the rig and axles level, take a few dimensions to check spring heights and as long as they are all pretty close, then you can start squaring up the rear axle and centering it.

You can clamp straight edge vertically to the rotors that are held in place with the lug nuts or hang plumb bobs off the wheel arches in the frame. When you get the rear axle centered perfectly, then measure from the tube right by the housing end to the hole in the frame near the center of the belly skid. Just have someone butt the dumb end of the tape measure to the tube and you read the closest edge of the hole in the side of the frame. Get both of those the same and your rear axle is now square and centered to the frame.

Once that is done, center the front axle similar to how you did the rear and then measure between the rear axle tubes on both sides to the front axle tubes. That will get both axles square and centered to each other and the rig.

I've done it this way many times and then had a professional alignment done. I've never had them make any changes afterwards because of how close I was able to get it.

The key is to level the rig since your measuring at an angle. If one side is higher, that dimension will be longer even though the axle is square. If you get it level both places, the dimensions will tell you if it's square.

I use a digital angle finder that reads down to 1/10 of a degree and get it to zero before I start measuring.

Then:

Check your toe-in next by measuring the distance between the tires. Measure distance on the rear part of the front tire, You can clamp straight edge vertically to the rotors that are held in place with the lug nuts or hang plumb bobs off the wheel then measure the distance on the front of the front tires. There should be no more the 1/8" (3/16" for 35" tires) difference. Too much toe-in will "plow" and to little toe-in will "pull" (trying to pull the tires away from each other). Either one of these can give you death wobble.



There are a good number of threads on this subject already. Hopefully this helps.
My best guess will be that your toe-in is too much and your differential angle is not close to 6*.