I am experiencing a bad shimmy in the steering wheel (wheels) when I hit bumps in the road. If I am driving over 35MPH, it gets so bad I have to slow down or pull over. It is a out of balance or death wobble type of shimmy.

I doubt it is a balance issue since it only happens when I hit a bump (or hole in the road)... I can't find anything else that would be causeing this. Anyone have any ideas?

 

bump, I'm having the same issue. Wondering if its the early signs of death wobble.

I'm putting a new track bar on this weekend and replacing the stock upper and lower arms bolts with grade 8 (what seems to be the cure to DW). I'll let you know if it cures it for me.

 

Try googling "jeep jk death wobble diagnosis". There are a ton of good write ups and videos.

 

its a sign you need to torque all your steering parts before its damaged and causes DW or your tires need balanced. btw, I'm still running factory hardware and no DW

 

But it's not DW. I can drive 80MPH and be fine. As far as I know DW happens even at low speeds. My shimmy happens only after a bump it hit.

 

80 MPH or 20 MPH, it's still DW. Just takes longer to die at 20 MPH. Retorque everything to spec and check all bushings, as well as ball joints.

 

Yea that's the plan. I do ride my Jeep pretty hard.. I should be nicer to it

 

I disagree. DW is something way different than some shimmy. I would check your ball joints for wear. The stock ones go out quickly with larger tires, particularly when they are improperly balanced, and can produce the same symptoms you describe...at least that's what I experienced with one of our Jeeps. That said, don't underestimate the effects of simply unbalanced tires. Bumps can throw their harmonics off and produce brief steering shimmy. Sometimes you have to take your tires to a few shops before you find one that knows how to get big tires balanced right. You can always swap tires with a friend for a few miles to diagnose this one. These are things to look at after you've tightened all your suspension bolts.

 

Thanks. I'll check it out.

 

I'm still running factory hardware too! But I'm the less fortunate one that is having the same issues on my stock 08 as these guys with their modified JKs. I have a lift ready to put on it and I'm close to buying some 33's, but I'm not doing so until I can can convince my Jeep dealership this should be covered under my "lifetime power train warranty". I got them to diagnose the issue for 75$ and they told me it was my steering stabilizer failing and also they wanted to charge me 120$ to install a new one. Yeah I'm not stupid and I didn't do that, I instead installed a new teraflex 9550 myself just to see if they were by some chance right, but it helped a lot for about 2 weeks and now its back to doing it again... Now I'm gonna try and take it to another mopar dealership and see what they think. I love my Jeep but his really sucks!