So heres my situation, I'm on my way to work today and experienced some serious death wobble...and twice on the way home. Both times while braking to make a turn, around 45-55 mph. This is my first bout with it.

About the Jeep: Stock suspension with factory coil replacements for a small amount of lift, 1" spacer up front. Northridge bolt kit installed about a year ago.

I think this all started when I put in the 1" spacer. I noticed a slight "shimmy" at the same speeds after the install (took sway bar endlinks loose, shocks loose, brakelines, etc. didn't loosen trac bar). Wasn't really that much of a concern at the time, never had any death wobble.

Fast forward to this past weekend. I decided to switch out my 265 70 17 duratracs on factory moabs, for my factory steelies and factory tires. Just for the winter to save a little wear and tear on the new tires. This is the only thing I did was switch out the tires and BAM!! Death Wobble!!

I'm stumped as to what could be the problem. Could the heavier tires have masked the problem over the summer? When I got home today, I loosened the trac bar on the axle side and retightened to 125lbft (it was tight as hell when I loosened it). I really need some input as to what could be the problem. I'm scared to drive it tomorrow, it felt like the Jeep was going to shake itself apart.

Anyways, thanks in advance....any and all suggestions welcomed!

 

did you get the new tires balanced!?

 

Did you drive it after loosening the track bar? It's hard to tell because you're still scared to drive it. Take the bolts out and look at the holes for the track bar, they could be wallowed out. Also take a good look at the bushings while it's out. Lie underneath it and have someone turn the wheel side to side and watch for excessive play in any of the links.

There are dozens of threads on this. Including one that Eddie did and it explains how simple our front end truly is.

Project-JK.com - Jeep JK Wrangler Resource » Basic Do-it-Yourself Jeep JK Wrangler Front End Alignment

 

Same exact thing just happened to me. Had someone turn the wheel while underneath. Bad track bar bushing, tie rod end and drag link to pitman arm and lower ball joint passenger side. No issue all summer with bigger tires but full death wobble a day later with smaller factory tires. Just replaced all rides great know. Oh yea I had death wobble 3 times same day. Watch pit mans vid on you tube how to diagnose death wobble works great.

 

Click on the link below in my signature to my write-up thread on Diagnosing DW.

Read the first couple posts in the thread.

Watch the 2 YouTube videos found in the 3rd post and perform the inspection steps in the 2nd video.

This will give you a good start.

Absolutely do not drive your jeep until it is fixed. Even one episode of DW can damage multiple components.

The tires may have been a trigger, but they aren't the cause.

You will want to remove the trackbar to inspect the bushings and bracket bolt holes. You can then correctly torque there bolts with the bushings in a neutral position at your new ride height so they are not at risk of further damage from being run twisted/pre-loaded/binding to a different ride height.

 

Thanks for all the input. I guess I'll leave it parked until this weekend so I can take a better look. Pretty frustrating, since I took the precaution to install the "bolt kit" and the Jeep hasn't even hit 40,000 miles yet!

 

The entire front end is total crap under these new jeeps. I had the same problem at 39K, new ball joints, drag link and tie rod. Replaced everything with Synergy manufacturing, stock replacement is just going to wear out in the same time. All the tie rod ends were really worn and the ball joints were ridiculous. You may have just some of these items that need to be replace, I hope for your sake its not the case.