So heres a few things I've noticed while trailing my jeep thru the trails, mud and snow and wanted to ask what's normal and what I should look into.
1. While pushing thru a fair bit of snow in 4lo and locked on some parts of the trails I've noticed that the front and or rear sometimes both would act as if they were wrapping. I thought axle wrap was more so with a leaf sprung suspension setup so it caught me off guard.
2.1 Similar situation as number 1 but while gaining traction and turning the wheels I would see and feel the front wheels oscillate left to right kinds like death wobble where the front wheels push and pull and shake the wheel. Never experienced this so it was something I wanted to question.
3. I finally setup the suspension front and rear and my currie steering system along with a OME steering stabilizer. While driving down the road thru slight dips or uneven road I will experience bump steer. The wheel moves left or right. It's not violent but its there. No drop pitman arm, adjustable teraflex track bar that's been adjusted and centered. Not sure what else would cause it.
4. Steering wheel play, I have a light dead spot. It's small and I feel when going down the road the front will track and I can feel the slight pull left or right depending on how the front is tracking. The steering shaft will move but the pitman arm wont move in this small window of dead space. I can also remove the drag link and grab the pitman arm and feel the small movement as if maybe its lash or something in the gearbox. Also noticed that when I'm steered full lock and play with the dead space in the wheel, the pitman arm has a VERY small amount of fore/aft play. Only slightly. The gearbox does not leak and the jeep currently has 47k miles.
I think everybody pretty much answered all these the same way I'm about to, but I'll throw in my interpretation anyway.
1: Just as others are saying, you'll experience the same in sand depending on conditions. Jeep's grabbing handfuls of snow in this case, pulling it back, and grabbing again, which results in an oscillation that just keeps building and can end up getting violent, especially on a steep climb when the front is light. A lot of environmental variables that can make this violent, or non existent at different times.
2: If you're going slow and feeling this, under traction, it's binding in the drive line. Locked, all 4 tires are trying to travel different distances with the same amount of rotation. This will even be present with axles unlocked to a lesser extent, you've still got one front and one rear tire, either left or right, that's trying to travel at the same speed.
However, what it sounds like more to me, is typical operation of a universal joint axle shaft. U-joints do not spin at a steady speed when turned, they actually "lunge." I've never broken a front shaft off road but I have some friends that would every time we went out. I'd watch them get stuck in a hole or obstacle and with the wheels spinning, saw the wheel back and forth. At the furthest extent of steering lock the tires would be wobbling so much the u-joint would give in from shock loading.
This is a great video to help visualize it. It explains why you need to phase your driveshafts, but also explains the oscillation in the front tires with the wheel cut. In this instance, your pinion gear is providing a constant rotational force and speed, and due to the operating angle at the u-joint the tire is speeding up and slowing down in quick succession. RCV shafts are constant velocity joints and largely eliminate this effect, one of the many reasons they are considerably stronger.
Driveshaft Angle and Phasing
It's also possible that one of the axle shaft u-joints is getting worn out and seizing up a bit, that can exaggerate the feeling.
3: As long as your track bar and drag link are parallel, there's really nothing more to do about it. A small amount of movement of the wheel is not unusual, and will be more obvious as you're lifted higher, for a few reasons. Because of the factory "inverted Y" steering setup on these Jeeps, as your front axle drops, the toe goes in. This is because the angle from the steering box to the right tire has increased. As long as the drag link and track bar are parallel, this has no direct affect on the right tire. However, the tie rod from the left tire attaches partway up the drag link, so as that angle increases it also pulls the left tire in. The opposite is true for compression, and the difference is greater with more suspension lift. Also, that force can slightly deflect the drag link itself, which is why the Currie steering feels so much more solid from the driver's seat over stock. Jeep elimnated this whole dance by switching to a knuckle-to-knuckle steering setup on the JK. Anyway, now the condition of traction on the ground has changed. Track bars of course also travel in and arc, so there's a whole lateral load being applied between the sprung and unsprung weight of the vehicle as the suspension is rapidly cycling. If it's an uneven bump, being a solid axle vehicle, anything that happens to one side affects the other. So as one tire hits a dip, toe is affected, lateral load between the axle and frame changes, and contact patch and center of drive force on the pavement changes. This can result in a a bit of wandering of the steering, worse with wider tires. Still at no point should you be fighting it, feeling any continuing oscillation afterwards, or have the Jeep darting either way. Usually all of this movement and motion and variables just adds up to a tiny wiggle of the steering wheel.
4: There are a lot of places to have slack build up. There is at least one (might be a couple, can't remember) ujoints on the steering shaft, natural lash in the steering box, and sometimes some roll in the tie rod ends. As long as it's minor I wouldn't worry about it. Yet another downside to solid axle life.
And of course all these small changes can transmit into axle movement a bit. Your control arm bushing are all new and tight as you said, but if they're the rubber style, there's still a damping element that allows a small amount of movement and what I always refer to as a "fluttering" feeling when you hit bumps, gain traction, etc. When I went to Johnny Joints on my control arms a lot of that minor fluttering went away, but I could still tell there was a small amount, and that went away when I welded in the last two JJs on top of the front axle.
