Another adder

Picked this up today, its an '06. Has a soft top and bikini top also. Interior is like new, only has 56K miles. I like everything about...except one...I took it for a long test drive, on and off road, various speed from 25 to 70. No issues, until the ride home, then I got the dreaded death wobble about 3 times on the highway. Ugh. I didn't expect to have to fix something right away. It was a personal sale, not a dealer. It was an otherwise smoking good deal.

 

SAme thing happened with My F-350.. Nice looking Jeep though.. I like it..

 

is it a stick shift rubicon . dreaded death wobble on a newer jeep :?

 

Yes it's a 6 speed. On the DW, it is 8 years old with about 56k on it so not exactly new. I checked the bushings and most are old rubber that's cracked. I ordered new poly bushings already. I'll check the ball joints too.

 

I understand this is an issue with JK's also.

 

My '88 YJ got the wobbles when the BFG tires were worn and needed re-balancing.

Also the track bar bolt does indeed need to be checked for tight, as mentioned above.

 

I don't know what TJ's, YJ's, and JK's are (only CJ's!), but with my old job I drove a '98 Cherokee, a '00 or so Cherokee Sport, and an '07 Liberty. Put a LOT of miles on 'em, and NEVER had a wobble of any kind with any of them. They were awesome, I loved 'em all. I'd love to have that Liberty back.

But one day on the Interstate in Denver, I saw a girl driving a Wrangler (I think), and that thing went into such a violent wobble I thought parts were gonna fly! It was pretty eye-opening and scary.

 

I replaced all the front bushings...upper and lower control arms, track bar, and sway bar plus end links...along with putting on a new steering damper. The ball joints felt good, no movement to indicate replacement was needed. The front feels nice and firm now. No death wobble yet but I need to drive it some more. Still have a very slight pull to the right so I might need an alignment, especially after replacing all that.

As an aside, those rubber bushings are a BEAR to get out, especially the one on the axle for the driver side upper control arm. Took me 10 hours total to replace all of them, most of which was getting the old bushings out. The new poly bushings use the old rubber bushing metal casing so I couldn't just hammer it out I had to remove the rubber part only. I also changed the spark plugs, which were original, the gap was 45-50 and should have been 32-35, maybe my mileage will go above 14.5 now. Overall I'm still really happy with the purchase.