Time to do a huge steering upgrade
- Thread starter joeyallen25
- Start date
That’s a pretty big overhaul. You may be able to save yourself some expense if you pinpoint the root cause and replace only the verified culprits.
I did that same upgrade a couple years ago, it's what you see in my profile pic, but this last winter I did the WJ over the knuckle swap... SOOO much better. I don't even have to run the stabilizer now. This pic is from Hell's Gate, 3,500 mile round trip right after the swap.
I made a youtube vid of it at SMORR after I added my steering box brace.
If you haven’t done a dry steering test you don’t have any idea of what you need.
What you might need is more money after you throw parts at it because you didn’t realize do you have a bad control arm bushing.
Or you may not need any more than a ratchet to tighten a connection.
I’m not trying to dismiss the desire for your rig to be better-That is almost universal among jeep owners.
Less than an hour ago I was with somebody that had put on the heaviest steering i’d ever seen.
Before he was finished he was back to a much more stock set up and had finally gotten himself a gearbox that the shaft was not moving up and down.
What you might need is more money after you throw parts at it because you didn’t realize do you have a bad control arm bushing.
Or you may not need any more than a ratchet to tighten a connection.
I’m not trying to dismiss the desire for your rig to be better-That is almost universal among jeep owners.
Less than an hour ago I was with somebody that had put on the heaviest steering i’d ever seen.
Before he was finished he was back to a much more stock set up and had finally gotten himself a gearbox that the shaft was not moving up and down.
If you have death wobble, like a extremely violent shuddering that starts around 45, it means your axle is moving left and right while driving. Aside from having every single control arm bushing being blown out, there is one obvious culprit. It's the track bar, which is the part that actually keeps your axle from wandering. The control arm setup on a jeep tj does not actually keep the axle positioned without it.
If your track bar bushings are good, I would inspect the axle mount first, the hole can get wallowed out. The bolt is torqued to 55 ft lbs I think. The frame side is much higher, like 200 ft lbs or something.
Just to clarify, you can have wobble in your steering because of a ton of issues, but death wobble is where your tires will literally start turning left and right violently while driving. There's a bunch of videos of it on YouTube. My jeep had it when I bought it and it was terrifying to drive.
If your track bar bushings are good, I would inspect the axle mount first, the hole can get wallowed out. The bolt is torqued to 55 ft lbs I think. The frame side is much higher, like 200 ft lbs or something.
Just to clarify, you can have wobble in your steering because of a ton of issues, but death wobble is where your tires will literally start turning left and right violently while driving. There's a bunch of videos of it on YouTube. My jeep had it when I bought it and it was terrifying to drive.
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I was more focused on the large difference in length of the track bar and drag link. Does that not have a significant bearing on bump steer?
The trackbar and draglink relationship tends to confuse folks. While very few will ever look at a very long lower control arm set up with much shorter upper without at least raising an eyebrow or two, they have no issue foisting the same relationship upon their steering. I won't ever do it but my sensibilities are not the same as everyone else's.
We do need to clarify the function of the steering stabilizer so we can stop all this nonsense of "drives soooooo gooder it doesn't need one" which is pure bullshit. The best driving rigs I build have a 100% transparent hydro assist cylinder on them. The main reason they drive so very nicely is that fucking cylinder acts as a very awesome damper. It mitigates the little and big bumps in the road surface and slows down how much and how often those impact the steering gear. Running without a stabilizer isn't a badge of honor, but one of ignorance about what they do.
It has always been my understanding that the steering damper is there to keep more hands from being broken by people with digits in the spokes when there is a strong impact. That and dampen little stuff from the tire to the wheel.
They damp forces transmitted by the tires impacting stuff to protect stuff. I care more about the steering gear than I do fingers. Fingers will eventually get better, the steering gear doesn't.
As i get older sometimes I wish changing out broken body parts was as easy as a steering box.
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