'94 Jeep Cherokee tire problem...

[iloveyaxo]

The other night, I got into an accident and hit a tree. This all occured on the left side of the vehicle. My drivers door got smashed in, door handle broken off, and mirror broken off. And my rear passenger door got smashed in a little bit too. But other than that, I was driving my car home from the towing place.

The front right tire became flat, somehow.

Then the front left tire was whobbling insane style. I had someone look at it for a brief second and he said that the rim was bent. But I'm not exactly sure. My dad also believes that something more than just that could be messed up with the tire. What do you think? What could it be if it isn't the tire/rim? Since the tire is whobbling insane style and looks like it could come off at any time.

Thank you.

[citizen@large]

With an impact like you're descibing, you need to seriously search the term-


"Death Wobble"

Be Afraid!!! It could be anything... Basically, your steering is f*kd.

~Good Luck!

[dave92cherokee]

Is your jeep 2 or 4wd? You probably need to jack up the front end and get under there and look at both sides and compare the two to see what looks out of position, or bent, or broken. Also spin the wheel while you're under there to see if it looks like it's going straight or if by spinning by itself if it wobbles. If it wobbles by itself then there's damage to the front end that needs to be fixed, but if it spins straight then it's death wobble and can usually be remedied with rotate, balance, and alignment.

[Ray H]

Process of elimination. Start with the simple. Move one of your "good" wheels from the rear to the front and see if it still wobbles.

[dave92cherokee]

Only bad thing about moving just one wheel is if both wheels are out of balance then it'll throw everything off. If you can still drive it or have another vehicle like a truck then take off all 4 wheels and go have them balanced then put them on and drive it to see how it is. If one of the wheels is bent when they balance it they will tell you that it's bent or "out of round". If they're fine and it still wobbles then get the front end aligned as just a simple alignment problem could cause that. If the alignment doesn't fix it or they find bad ball joints during alignment then get that taken care of. But if it doesn't fix it then replace the steering damper shock. 90% of the time one of those will take care of death wobble just depends on which one is the problem or sometimes all 3 are the problem. I speak from experience because last year I had really bad death wobble at 55mph had to have all that done and replace all tie rod ends and ball joints on the front to get rid of it.