The family and I had a great time at Saturday's Jeeps for Joy event at Rausch Creek. I decided to keep it easy on the trails due to having my son and the misses out with me, so we stayed on green and a few blue trails lead by Jerry.
By mid-day, there was an occassional noise, clank-clank-clank, metal to metal heard when the front end was under stress....hillclimbs, over larger rocks and stumps. I gave cause to the front locker, but with question. The steering remained tight, tracking straight, and on a few occassions other club members and I had peeked underneath for a minute or two but failed to find anything wrong.
At the end of the day after the raffle we leave, and just before RT81 entrance ramp I'm going about 45 mph and suddenly get a violent death wobble. In the process of slowing down the death wobble goes completely away, and we safely make it to the shoulder. I climb under the TJ and everythings tight and in alignment, UJoints good, no bent tierod, draglink or tracbar.
This death wobble incident repeated anytime I got over 40 mph. So we made the trip back home doing 30-35 mph in the shoulder and right hand lane with our hazard lights on. To add to the jeeps issues we suffered one flat tire from being on the shoulder. The usual 1.5 hour trip took us 4 hours.
Here's the report of what I find today....
There is a small dent, 1/4 of dime size,in the steering stabilizer. This dent is leaking VERY slowly. I'm guessing I missed this due to the caked on mud and water that was already there.
The dent in the SS was caused by the back of bolt where the draglink and tierod connect. I think the shuttering in the gas pedal I felt and several of us heard on Saturday was from this rubbing.
And there's more....normally the bolt gives clearence, right?? Mine does not allow for this clearence cause the bracket for the passenger side lower swaybar link and the tierod bracket are slightly bent toward the drivers side.
I guess I came down on the brackets at some point in the day.
Do I now purchase new brackets and have them welded in place, or heat'em up and put them back where they were?
What would you guys do?
I did check the unit bearings and there is NO movement. The TRE's are good. Everything else is Torqued to specs from the FSM.
Its amazing what washing away some dirt can do in finding the problems.
My front axle is a High Pinion D30 with 4.56s and a locker.
