Curing death wobble
One of the worst thing that can happen to you and your Jeep while driving at higher speeds (mostly on the Interstates) is thing called “death wobble”. It happens usually when you hit some pothole or uneven bridge – road connection with only one side of the car. Suddenly everything shakes like your Jeep was falling apart. Most of the time the only thing you can do is slow down till it stops and continue driving, this time much slower.
Recently our Cherokee (XJ) developed quite annoying death wobble case – it was doing it every time we hit 45mph (which hardly can be called high speed) making it almost completely undriveable even in the town. Unfortunately neither of the “standard death wobble solutions” worked. More – as we upgraded steering to the 1 ton version and replaced track bar with brand new OEM replacement the XJ behaved even worse – death wobble moved down to 35mph. Now we have a problem! After careful checking for plays in every front suspension component it turned out that at least on driver side ball joints are completely worn out. Could it be the case?
We decided to give it a shot. After quick (well 3h per side) ball joints replacement – as we replaced all four – time had come to make a test ride. And… full success – death wobble is gone! So next time… well there’ll be no next time as since now ball joints are on our list of maintenance on every front axle we got in our hands.
