Vibration and loss of control
 

Occasionaly when I am driving my Unlimited and I would go over a series of small bumps in a road, for instance a man-hole cover, i would feel vibration int eh steering wheel for a about 1-2 seconds after the bump. My Fiance said she had something similar happent o her but i told her to ignore it because it was normal. Just today we were driving down a paved country road, that had repairs done in some spots to the pavement causing bumps, we have both driving over these exact bumps before in other vehicles. When we went over them in the Jeep going 80km/h (about 50mph) I lost complete control of the jeep, the steering wheel was shaking severly as was teh entire vehicle. I had to hiot the brakes hard (but not too hard because our 11 month old was strapped in his car-seat) and i was unable to turn at all. She had told me this is what happened to her. It happened to us 3 times onthe way home, at slopwer speeds too. the vibration and loss of control did not go away until the vheicle came to a complete stop. I check all 4 tires, they were all on tight and full of air so i turned off the ignition then started it up again. If this was to happen in a corner, or with an object in the road there would be no avoidance whatsoever.

Anyone have any idea what this may be?

Thanks, Tyson R.

with the jeep running get someone to slowley move the thereing wheel left to right, look at all components to make sure they are tight, there are a couple of things that can cause this, broken tracbar bracket (could be just one weld other to fail soon after)....a loose track bar, bad steering stablizer or combined with alignment could be the some or all the issues...

i had bad stablizer and bad alignment after a wheeling trip, caused similar not fun about a year ago, then a few months ago had the trackbar bracket rip off the axle and at 15-20 mph, totally uncontrolable, all i could do was hit the brakes and hold on....:what?:

i could not have imagined if it had happend at speeds above 50mph, :eek2:

Do a search for "death-wobble", that is the term for what you are experiencing.

Take it to the dealer.If you are experiancing death wobble,with arig this new,something is major wrong.

I had the exact same thing happen to me. I am taking it to the dealer tonight. I will report back on what they find.

Talked with the mechanic at the dealer. He said that he had seen a couple of these in before. He mentioned something about a steering damper. I will pick it up tomorrow and let you know exactly what the final diag. is.

The service ticket and the service manager said the problem was a leaking "steering damper" the ticket said it was replaced and I looked below and saw that it was....


Steering feels more stable now.

Just had my steering damper replaced last week. It was fine one day and it seemed like the steering when to crap the next. I think I remember reading a couple of threads about a lot of these failing on earlier JKs. Mine is an 07 2-door, don't know the build date off the top of my head.

got the jeep back...they replaced the steering damper. It did make a big difference....I made sure to hit every big bump I could find.

if you run larger tires then stock is it a good idea to pick up a aftermarket steering damper :thinking: maybe the stock one isn't so good