theksmith 3,667 Posted August 14, 2009 so over the last couple of months i developed a shimmy at around 45 mph... then suddenly over the past couple weeks it turned into full-blown rip-the-steering-wheel-out-of-your-hands death wobble! i did the easy things, check tightness on all the botls, tire rotations and balance - actually, i run the Dynabeads dynamic balancing media, so i should always be in balance, but i put few more ounces in just in case i wasn't running enough perhaps... nothing ez helped. i've been working lots of hours so no time to get under the jeep and really try to find the problem, so i left it with Joe at Absolute Offroad in west Phoenix on Wednesday to make it his problem! fortunately it turned out to just be the track bar bushings... they were completely shot he said. he replaced them with some of Kevin's super-hard durometer bushings and charged me a half hour of labor and his cost on the bushings... can't beat that deal. and now everything is back to normal, no shimmy, no death wobble! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
GRUNT 87 Posted August 14, 2009 Good to hear that you got her fixed. Joe and AO have always given me excellent advice! Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
dzJeepChic 2,377 Posted August 15, 2009 Yeah! That's awesome. Good ol' Joe! d Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
Number7 86 Posted August 15, 2009 Great write-up K-dude! Glad to see you do your own work on the rig. George:cool: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
theksmith 3,667 Posted August 19, 2009 A mod a did a long time ago but never wrote about... notice the red button: i had just upgraded all of my interior lights to LED, and though they made a super bright and very evenly lit interior... on night runs they now destroyed your night vision whenever you needed to just turn on the overhead lamp for a second. so i wired up the main overhead lamps with a switch that turns on night-vision-friendly red LEDs when pushed: as you can see from the first pic, the regular white LEDs still work on the normal switches, but you just have the option now of turning on the red ones instead. unfortunately, the light isn't quite bright enough to read by, but it's plenty bright enough to see around the interior and find that french fry you just dropped. i got most of the interior LED upgrades, including the red ones from http://www.superlumination.com the red ones are the "12 Volt Stainless Steel Led Accent Lights" from this page: http://superlumination.com/indicator.htm Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
theksmith 3,667 Posted August 19, 2009 another old mod... check out the not-quite-factory-looking slide switch in the center of the climate controls: so the Jeep came with "Dual Zone Climate Controls" which means you can adjust the temperature for the passenger side and driver side seperately. neat idea, except 90% of the time, I'm riding solo, and therefore want the entire interior "Climate" to be the same temperature... why would i want my side fighting the other side to keep me cool, while a non-existant passenger stays warm? add to that, i'm a fiddler... i can't ever get the temperature just right and leave it alone, i have to fiddle with it constantly during those in-between spring and fall months where you don't have everything on full blast heat or cold. this means i have to constantly fiddle with 2 knobs to keep the entire inside where i want it. i know, welcome to my insanity... anyway, i added the slider switch seen above... - when it's in the right position, dual climate controls function just as from the factory - when it's in the left position, both climate zones stay in sync... either knob will adjust both side's termperature at the same time. now i only fiddle with one knob too much! some pics from working on it: Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
theksmith 3,667 Posted September 7, 2009 what's all this??? well tomorrow i'm finally going to have a shop swap in those axles that i bought like 2 years ago and have never gotten around to installing... they are factory WJ axles just like i already have, except with 4.56 gears and an ARB front locker and an Aussie rear locker in them. the "new" axles only have a couple thousand mile on the gears/bearings/lockers, but the rest of the components have well over 100k miles on them, so i'm having all the wearable parts swapped out at the same time... so the above picture includes: - new clayton weld-in control arm mount spacers - new moog upper & lower ball joints - new upper control arm bushings - new timken unit bearings (will keep old ones for trail spare) - new axle shafts (since the other ones have so many miles on the CV joints, and will keep the old ones as spares) also there: - new motor mounts (current ones look dry rotted and are sagging a bit) - new slightly longer rear bumpstops (5" instead of 4.5" to stop slight rear tire rub under extreme articulation) and the 2 big boxes are clayton 6" springs.... that's for later in the year though. this winter i plan to go to 6" and at the same time swap in a np242hd and new rear driveshaft and rebuild the front shaft. there's also a new tranny mount in the picture that i'll swap in during that transfer case change. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
LSRGreg 0 Posted September 9, 2009 nice build up.. I can't believe you took your WJ down predator!! Wow. I wouldn't have thought a WJ could do it, without serious mods. I walked that trail many years ago following some hardcore wheelers, back when it was the 2nd or 3rd time anyone even ran it. I remember the owner of 4wheelers was there in his highly modded scrambler.. It may have changed a lot, but that was back just before you started hearing about tube crawlers... and this thing called rock crawling! I am very impressed you made it through there without more damage! G- Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
cutback 0 Posted September 14, 2009 I'm so glad I found this site and this thread, I just bought a 2001 GC and this thread has been a great help. I'm curious on how you wired the switch for the climate contol to get a dual to single zone control, and vice versa. Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
theksmith 3,667 Posted September 16, 2009 I'm so glad I found this site and this thread, I just bought a 2001 GC and this thread has been a great help. I'm curious on how you wired the switch for the climate contol to get a dual to single zone control, and vice versa. other great WJ resources: http://www.wjjeeps.com http://www.mallcrawlin.com http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f13/ as far as the climate thing, i think i just wired the outer 2 terminals of the rotary encoders so they are tied together when you flip the swith, hence the need for a DPDT switch (terminal 1 from switch A goes to terminal 1 from switch B and terminal 3 from switch A goes to terminal 3 from switch B) Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
