Can incorrect toe in cause death wobble?

Bargain Box

Stand back, I built this s*** myself...
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I'm scratching my head. I had some mild death wobble so I spent some time on it and now it's worse. You can check out my build thread if you want the play by play of what I've changed. The short version is new ZJ steering, new track bar, and new hubs. I set the toe as close as I could get with Jerry's alignment method. Now between 35-50mph she gets very angry. The wheels and tires were recently done so I'm confident it's not a tire balance issue. Someone hit me with a wrench at this point....
 
Imperfectly balanced tires are the usual root cause of and trigger for DW. Even if they were just or recently balanced. Not many shops take the time to get our big jeep size tires balanced good enough. I had to take my TJ to my local Discount Tire Store 3X in one day before they finally got them balanced well enough to stop trying to cause DW on my TJ.
 
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Well based on the overwhelming consensus so far, I'll make an appointment for the tire shop. These tires have about 50 miles on them so hopefully they are nice about it.
 
Well based on the overwhelming consensus so far, I'll make an appointment for the tire shop. These tires have about 50 miles on them so hopefully they are nice about it.
I wouldn't care if they were nice about it at all. I often privately offer the guy doing the balancing a $20 tip if he gets them perfect and it fixes the problem. It's amazing how much more effort they'll put into the job.
 
I hate when DW rears its ugly head. Just another data point - I found that adding some toe out will at least will stop the DW while you're investigating. Not a long term solution, but if you need to drive the Jeep, it will get you down the road without scaring the crap out of you.
As a quick sanity check, rotate tires front to rear, see if there is a change. I still believe it takes 2 things out of whack. Imbalanced tires seems to trigger it, but plenty of Jeeps run around with the tires not perfectly balanced. It seems to be tires AND something else. And the list of 'something elses' seems to be endless. Good luck.
 
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Well based on the overwhelming consensus so far, I'll make an appointment for the tire shop. These tires have about 50 miles on them so hopefully they are nice about it.
I've got $10 saying it isn't tire balance...

I've had horrible chunked out tires, wheels with completely missing weights, dented edges, and more - sometimes all at the same time - and never once had resulting DW. It may be contributory in some instances, but there is little evidence to prove it's causal.

Having recently had to track down the source of DW on my LJ this past summer, it turned out to be the upper bushing on the passenger side axle bracket. This was a first for me. In the past, DW has always been previously tied to trackbar bushing/joint, wheel/hub bearings, steering box, or steering shaft. I would start there (along with the other culprits like worn TRE).
 
I've got $10 saying it isn't tire balance...

I've had horrible chunked out tires, wheels with completely missing weights, dented edges, and more - sometimes all at the same time - and never once had resulting DW. It may be contributory in some instances, but there is little evidence to prove it's causal.
On the contrary I’ve had brand new wheels and tires that I had balanced over 15 times and had death wobble consistently. Took a loss and got different wheels and tires and no more death wobble. 3 years no issues.
 
On the contrary I’ve had brand new wheels and tires that I had balanced over 15 times and had death wobble consistently. Took a loss and got different wheels and tires and no more death wobble. 3 years no issues.
I'd be curious to see how that set worked on a different Jeep or if swapping wheels into different positions changed anything. I've swapped probably 200 sets of tires in my life while my dad was running his shop. After doing maybe my 5th or 6th set of tires, it seemed like even the dumbest of trained monkeys could manage to use the balance machine correctly. Granted, there is a small but steep learning curve, though easily overcome with just a few sets of tires for a technician to find his "groove" (mainly in the mounting/centering of the wheel within the balance collet in a repeatable fashion).

My comment still stands though - wheel balance is at most contributory. In your instance, you may be right as the cusp of inducing DW where the new wheels/tire combo put you over the edge. If wheel balance were indeed causal, one would assume that strapping on 2-3 oz (or more) of lead to a wheel would/should/could cause DW (or alternatively, having a wheel/tire so damaged/beat/worn that it requires 2-3 oz (or more) of weight to correct).
 
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I've got $10 saying it isn't tire balance...

I've had horrible chunked out tires, wheels with completely missing weights, dented edges, and more - sometimes all at the same time - and never once had resulting DW. It may be contributory in some instances, but there is little evidence to prove it's causal.

Having recently had to track down the source of DW on my LJ this past summer, it turned out to be the upper bushing on the passenger side axle bracket. This was a first for me. In the past, DW has always been previously tied to trackbar bushing/joint, wheel/hub bearings, steering box, or steering shaft. I would start there (along with the other culprits like worn TRE).
I will be getting the tires balanced first. For one reason, I've checked or replaced almost everything else.
 
I will be getting the tires balanced first. For one reason, I've checked or replaced almost everything else.
A good start for sure, though keep in mind that we've heard plenty of anecdote here in this thread and in others about having to have tires balanced a dozen or more times to be "perfect". If the reality of the situation is that the "12th (or 15th, or 20th) time's the charm", the we have to either accept one of two things:
1) that wheel balance is indeed causal to DW and that the Jeep TJ is so inherently poorly engineered that we must be remarkably diligent so as to maintain extremely tight balance at all times to prevent DW from being a problem or​
2) that there is so much of an art and skill to tire balancing that one could probably fundamentally "change the game" by opening a tire shop with such expertly training tire technicians that all other businesses would eventually close down due to not being able to be competitive.​

I don't know about you, but I have a hard time buying into either #1 or #2 above. if it were me, I'd keep digging into the issue. It took me a few weeks of looking, experimenting and disassembling things to find the barely loose-in-the-socket axle bushing that was the cause of my issue. In the end, it was a $10 part (bushing), $10 in a metal sleeve (made by my local exhaust shop at the advice of @mrblaine), and a few beads of weld that solved my issue. This was the same bushing that was replaced <1 year earlier and worked in my TJ without issue. However, it became an issue once I swapped the axles into my LJ (which is why it also caused me frustration since I "already replaced that!").
 
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I am in shock at the moment. Not one single wheel on this jeep has a wheel weight, not even the spare. What is particularly shocking about this is that I had these wheels and tires done when the jeep was on jack stands. I drove them there in the bed of a truck. I specifically remember seeing weights on the wheels when I picked them up. They might have 20 miles on them. Did they evaporate from sitting in a stack in my shop? I'll be calling them this morning to ask about getting the wheels done again. I was able to move the wheels around and get the wobble to decrease so one of the front wheels is worse than the one I replaced it with. Needless to say, I can't do any more troubleshooting of the wobble until balancing is done.
 
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I am in shock at the moment. Not one single wheel on this jeep has a wheel weight, not even the spare. What is particularly shocking about this is that I had these wheels and tires done when the jeep was on jack stands. I drove them there in the bed of a truck. I specifically remember seeing weights on the wheels when I picked them up. They might have 20 miles on them. Did they evaporate from sitting in a stack in my shop? I'll be calling them this morning to ask about getting the wheels done again. I was able to move the wheels around and get the wobble to decrease so one of the front wheels is worse than the one I replaced it with. Needless to say, I can't do any more troubleshooting of the wobble until balancing is done.
Were they stick on weights or edge/clamp weights? I have seen stick-on weights come undone fairly easily in the heat. This is probably exacerbated by sitting in the heat and/or sitting on their side with no centrifugal force to "press" them tightly to the surface of the wheel.
 
Were they stick on weights or edge/clamp weights? I have seen stick-on weights come undone fairly easily in the heat. This is probably exacerbated by sitting in the heat and/or sitting on their side with no centrifugal force to "press" them tightly to the surface of the wheel.
They were edge weights. I also have found zero weights in my garage. I called the shop this morning and the owner answered. He was just as shocked as me and said if I bring it in tomorrow as soon as they open he will do it before they get started.
 
I am in shock at the moment. Not one single wheel on this jeep has a wheel weight, not even the spare. What is particularly shocking about this is that I had these wheels and tires done when the jeep was on jack stands. I drove them there in the bed of a truck. I specifically remember seeing weights on the wheels when I picked them up. They might have 20 miles on them. Did they evaporate from sitting in a stack in my shop? I'll be calling them this morning to ask about getting the wheels done again. I was able to move the wheels around and get the wobble to decrease so one of the front wheels is worse than the one I replaced it with. Needless to say, I can't do any more troubleshooting of the wobble until balancing is done.
A popular semi local store balanced a set of 40" tires for a rig I was working on. We stacked them up while finishing up some things. About a week later the owner paid a visit. I handed him all the weights that fell off. He was not amused.
 
They were edge weights. I also have found zero weights in my garage. I called the shop this morning and the owner answered. He was just as shocked as me and said if I bring it in tomorrow as soon as they open he will do it before they get started.
They make different style weight for various wheel lips. Using the incorrect weight will cause them to fly off going down the road.
When I was younger I worked in a tire shop, it was full of "car" guys/gals who took a lot of pride in their work, even tires (half the shop was into drifting). I try and keep an eye out for shops like that, if you stubble on one stick with it.
 
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