Topic: Jeep drivability issues

[Rio_Grande]

I have a 97 jeep wrangler that spent alot of time as a trail rig and around town. It wasn't beat but it was used. I decided this year I want to get it back road worthy. So I took it to a buddy of mine who does alignments. He diagnosed every steering part bad. Said the ball joints are ok and although I have a damaged control arm at the bushing he said he couldn't get any play out of it and indicated he really tried because it doesn't look good.

So I replaced the tie rod drag link, all ends and steering box and I can say it is tight. He aligned it and left the positive camber I need for the 3 inch lift.

However when I get up around 45 it wants to sway from side to side and a slight correction in steering really gets it going as if i am over correcting.

The track bar is relatively new and no play was found there.

I am running without sway bars at the moment and can't find them after I took them off. And my old steering damper broke when I was trying to get it off of the drag link.

What do you think?

[Jeffy]

Camber?  You mean caster?  Camber is side-to-side lean while caster is front-to-back.  Are you using stock control arms?  What's the caster set at?  How much toe is there?  The sway-bar is an important part of the suspension on a TJ.  If your friend id an alignment guy then he should be able to tell you what needs to be done to fix it.

[sharpxmen]

like he ^ said, caster angle check and def you need a swaybar with the TJ.

[grumpygy]

Just have to ask what type of machine was it aligned on.  Mine was doing that and I did find a bent rim so I replaced them all and still had the problem.  Took it in and its much better now.  Guy used one of the newer Hunter Machines to align it.

  Have to ask what is your tire pressure.

[VA_YJ]

I agree with Grumpygy - if you get all the suspension issues resolved (including sway bar), and you still have problems, check the tires and wheels.  Tire pressure, bent or damaged wheels, balance problems -  I've even had tire cords come loose inside a tire.  Try rotating wheels to pin point tire/wheel issues.

[grumpygy]

Just have to throw this out there.  I have two different brands of tires on my Jeep.  Same tread Pattern or very close.  When I had the new wheels put on they put one brand on the right and one on the left. That caused problems to.  Got much better when I took it back to them and had them put one Brand on the front and one on the back so each axle had the same brand.

[Rio_Grande]

Caster is set at 2.8
Toe is .16

The caster is out of spec, but that was where we put it after the lift and it was fine. That has been so long ago I don't remember why. I read an article that said with my 34 in tires it should be about 5.5 ish

Stock control arms.

[Jeffy]

The caster seems awfully tall.  I'm gonna guess that's why you're getting the shopping cart wobble.

[sharpxmen]

yeah, seems that needs more caster angle. Dunno what the values are for TJ but YJ is 6.5deg for manual transmission and 8deg for AT (i have no idea why they are different) and XJ is 7 deg so just comparing, i'm going to guess it should be at least 5 deg to have the steering pull straight. Also, you should have that sway bar taken care of, with the coil springs you really need one (even with leafs if they're soft like the stock ones or SOA setups).