CitadelJeep04

Im at the tire place gettin wheels balanced again, and gettin alignment specs printed. Hopefully i can work from those.

CitadelJeep04

So which helps DW? In or out? 1/16"out to try?

ssunde1

hey as for your JKS trackbar not going short enough now with the currie relocation, i have the same set up and had as short as it went was still too far out to the passenger side, so i took it to a machine shop and had them cut half an inch of the joint and half an inch cut off the tube where the joint threads in, perfect length now, and they didnt even charge me anything! as for the DW, i know its a bitch becaue i delt with it, turned out my holes were wallowed out too, thats why i went with the curre bracket. i no longer have real DW, but just a little shimmy/ bump steer when i hit certain bumps/holes. think it may be my ball joints. i tried to check for any play in them by lifting th front wheels of the ground and putting a pry bar underneath the tire and lifting up to try to gete some play, but there was none that i could tell, but maybe its just enough to cause a shimmy, but not enough for me to see when testing it. im also going to replace my LCA's because when i originally installed my lift, i made the mistake of not torqueing the bolts at the new ride height, so my preloaded bushings are probably not in great shape, although they appear to be fine. hopefully some day ill be able to hit a bump without my steering wheel bumping too.
goodluck with yours brother

ssunde1

Not to hijack, but planman I got a question for u, I've been trying to get my toe set to 1/8" in but the problem I'm running into is my LCAs and DS get in the way of my tape measure making an acurate reading of the back of the tire not possible, any way around this other than removing my lcas and driveshaft to get it set?
Hijack over

ssunde1

Preciate your knowledge planman, and thanks for answering the questions I was gonna ask when I do get some adjustable lca's, helps a lot. Happy trails!

therza

Great thread. Awesome write up Planman. But I do have one thing I would take exception to. Proper tire balance. It seems, from anecdotal experience that the JKs are really prone to tire balance issues. I had really bad DW that was not readily traceable to anything obvious, not too long after I installed my lift and tires. I checked everything and had 2 separate shops check everything. No one could find it. Finally, based on advice from my lift manufacturer, I had my tires DYNAMICALLY balanced - wheel weights on the inside lip of the rim and the outside lip of the rim. This is the ONLY thing I did and the DW is and has been gone ever since. The tires were balanced on a Hunter Engineering GSP 9700 Road Force balancer. That did the trick, even though they were re-balanced twice before. I have passed this on to other JK owners and they have reported similar results.

I would agree that perhaps, there still is a "problem" lurking in my suspension and the tire balance removed the "trigger event" from the system. Not unlike your analogy with the SS. But no DW is no DW, however the path to get there.

Just my 2 cents......

JKAY

Die? I guess if the driver is 16 and is on the second time behind a vehicle.

Lack of a SS WILL NOT KILL OR HURT OR HARM YOU. Use a little common sense and a little driver feel and you can drive it WIHTOUT a SS to help locate said problem. That is all he is saying. It will take some of the band-aid off the issue to help clearly locate the culprit.

What would people have ever done if you had to drive an early CJ that came from the factory withOUT a sway bar! ? ! Oh wait a second. They did.

CitadelJeep04

So I got the tires balanced again yesterday. It helped a lot, but I can still feel a slight shimmy. They didnt have a road force machine, but they got it close. I also had them print off the alignment specs for me, see below:



I made a note of what my LCA's were set to with these measurements. Last night I shortened my LCA's to make them both 23" eye to eye, which should have put me somewhere in the mid 6* range. FYI, the angle finder on the C is useless. On a flat ground, the angle finder showed me 7.5 and 8.5, and actual was 5.0 and 5.7. Anyways, notice the camber on the front driver side wheel. Does that mean my ball joints are bad, or a bent C? I'll have to use the pry bar method to check for play in the joints.

Another thing the alignment tech showed me was the screen on their machine that said both front wheels point slightly left, but not the same degree left. Weird because I have a HARD right pull. Steering wheel is centered, but I'm wondering if my draglink/tie rod lengths are inaccurate because I cant center the axle perfectly. I'll try the suggestion above to get my JKS track bar cut shorter to see if it helps. Could bad ball joints throw off the alignment enough to cause a pull in either direction?

I also rigged the stock SS back on to my RockKrawler tie rod. No more bump steer, and no more DW. I hit the same spot every morning that caused DW, and today it didnt happen. Not so much as a shimmy in the wheel. So the balancing helped, but above 60 I get a shimmy, so I'll find someone with a dynamic balancer soon.

BTW, my Kevlars are very loud once you hit 60mph. I mean really loud. Could this be due to the alignment being so far off?

So I'm guessing it was a combination between the balancing issue, and the camber being off on the left front wheel that is causing my DW. It only happened when I hit something with that wheel, so it makes sense.

Hellbound13

Your camber being that far off is mostly likely a bad ball joints. The stock ones are garbage. Only other thing it could be is a bent axle C.

fourwheelingbigbubba

I had the DW and the problem was bad ball joints and a loose track bar..
I ended up replacing both and put a rear track bar as well..good luck