I've got a bad case of the Death Wobble. PlanMan's write ups and videos have been great and although I have not found the culprit, I'm closer now after replacing the loose ball joints and getting an alignment tomorrow.
My question is this, and hopefully the answer will help me expedite getting this fixed. Has anyone else gotten a lift installed and have Death wobble start on a jeep that it did not exist on before?

I only ask because my jeep did not have death wobble and I had an RK Xfactor long arm lift installed along with the drag link flip kit (their new Pro Drag link) and my first test drive, i had a violent case of the death wobble.

One factor which I feel may have some impact is that I had a factory steering stabilizer before and my test drive was done with no steering stabilizer because its on back order. I'm glad I didn't install it because it may have masked the problem. We checked all connections to see if they were torqued correctly and discoverd that the ball joints were loose so we replaced all 4 with synergy HD ball joints. DW still exists so alignment is next and then going to disassemble everything from the pitman arm down looking for any signs of wear/wallowed out holes. I"m sure we will solve it but I just found it strange that the lift started the Death wobble problem. Interested to hear your feedback.

 

I was only having a shimmy prior to my RK 2.5 Max Travel. I got death wobble after installing the lift. You are torquing everything with the wheels on the ground right?

Here is the order of what I had to do to fix mine:

1. Ball joints
2. Drag Link
3. Alignment and tire balance
4. Tie rod end at pitman arm
5. Tie rod and tie rod end. and alignment

There was very minimal play in my tie rod which is why it was the last thing replaced.

 

I've got it narrowed down to the upper track bar mount. its the only thing that hasn't been replaced and it has a small amount of play. I've heard I need a larger bolt. Does anyone have the exact size of the bolt I need?

 

9/16-18 x 3 or 4 i dont remember the length.

 

9/16 if the hole isn't wallowed out. If its is you need to fix it.

 

DW after a lift install is the most common.

It usually happens either because:

• The installer did not properly torque all the bolts
• The installer did the install without loosening all bolts and waiting to torque any bolt that is to a rubber or polyurethane bushing until after the full weight of the vehicle was back on the ground at the new ride height. So, the non-flex joint bushings are preloaded/binding/twisted to the wrong ride height, causing a jittery ride and premature failure.
• There was some other weakness or component worn in the system, and the increased angles of the lift exposed the problem(s) that was/were already there.

I did the videos as a help so that less experienced people could see how simple it was to identify the most common sources.

However, I think that the videos may have caused people to get lazy and not go through the more thorough, written inspection checklist in my thread. It involves removing components, one at a time, and inspecting bushings, bracket bolt holes, bracket welds, etc.

Certainly, anyone who has had more than 1 or 2 DW occurrences should strongly consider doing the more thorough inspection. Someone who has had several DW occurrences will not find all the problems unless they go through the more thorough inspection.

 

Thanks Planman. I watched the vid and went through the checklist. It seems the alignment fixed the problem as I cannot replicate death wobble. As a precaution, I upgraded my hardware to the 9/16th grade 8 bolts on anything that was not included in the RK kit. I have done all my testing without a steering stabilizer so now that I am comfortable that we found the culprit, we are installing the fox ats steering stabilizer. will be interesting to feel if there is any value to it now that I've gotten used to driving without one.