Light steering shimmy
- Thread starter broken scope
- Start date
Thank you so much for coming back and reporting on the fix; it can save others a lot of heartache!
He even IM'd me an update since I was having similar issues. Bunch of good folks on this board!
OP
Yes l did it with a angle finder. I had it aligned at a shop earlier on and it was at 6.3 caster. Now l dropped the caster down one degree so it should be approx at 5.3 caster. I still get decent return to center and drives good.
OP
Not completely. Although a new front driveline from Adam's made a ton of difference. It's so slight now, I'm sure no one but me would notice it. Just saving up for some Currie Jonny joint arms.
OP
Another update! The shimmy came back even after adjusting the pinion angle but it did seem to get better. You all were right it ended up being tire balance after all i done but l have the jeep in good mechanical shape. Sometimes you have to eat crow but hopefully it will help others. I thought after all i went through with the tires and balancing it was something else. I had a guy balance to zero and no more shimmy. You just have to find someone that knows what there doing. By changing parts out l did learn something when l would hit a dip in the road l would get a shimmy from that. The slight movement in the trackbar bushing that a lot get was causing this. I put poly bushings there and fixed that issue. It was probably just 1/8 in movement was all it took. Thanks for all the help
Hello broken scope
I'm stuck in the same hole as you were. I've changed most everything, track bar, ball joints, upgraded to currie heavy duty steering, and so on. The Jeep has only 50K miles; it's an 05. I have not replace the control arm bushings. I was considering this next, since you can't tell much by looking them. My issue is a shimmy at 50 - 55 mph. My pinion angle is near perfect on the front diff. My alignment is good, but my castor is around 4 degrees. I have a 2" Old Man Emu lift and a 1" body lift. I have new tires, road forced balanced, and they are on new steel rims. I wish I bought aluminum. I measured the rim run out and the front tires are around twenty to thirty thou, not nearly as good a an aluminum rim, but not bad.
So, you say you reduced castor? Do you know what your number was. I would think you'd need to increase castor. I'm considering getting new bushing and at least two adjustable control arms to try to tweak the castor, but I hate to move the pinion angle when it's dead on. I'd have to compromise the pinion.
I'm stuck in the same hole as you were. I've changed most everything, track bar, ball joints, upgraded to currie heavy duty steering, and so on. The Jeep has only 50K miles; it's an 05. I have not replace the control arm bushings. I was considering this next, since you can't tell much by looking them. My issue is a shimmy at 50 - 55 mph. My pinion angle is near perfect on the front diff. My alignment is good, but my castor is around 4 degrees. I have a 2" Old Man Emu lift and a 1" body lift. I have new tires, road forced balanced, and they are on new steel rims. I wish I bought aluminum. I measured the rim run out and the front tires are around twenty to thirty thou, not nearly as good a an aluminum rim, but not bad.
So, you say you reduced castor? Do you know what your number was. I would think you'd need to increase castor. I'm considering getting new bushing and at least two adjustable control arms to try to tweak the castor, but I hate to move the pinion angle when it's dead on. I'd have to compromise the pinion.
Sorry you guys are having trouble. I made the above post a few weeks ago. I believe I am smarter now.
I would have trouble every time I changed a tire. It would take a couple of trips to the tire store to get things running smooth again. Also, I seemed to have trouble with tires going out of round. I developed a first name relationship with the tire truing shop in my town. A couple of weeks ago, I was having a slight shimmy at 50 after I had to put my spare on the passenger front. It wasn't bad enough to send me to the shop, but I avoided driving 50mph. Then I pulled the front wheels off to check the brakes and axle U-joints. When I put things back together again, my shimmy was much worse. This seemed to indicate to me that I had another tire out of round. I went to see my buddy at the tire truing shop. He determined that my wheel (lug centric) was off center. He loosed the lugs and re-tightened them using the correct procedure for lug centric wheels, and my problem went away. I had never heard hub centric or lug centric before. I’m convinced that wheels mounted off center was causing my tire out of round problems. I shared my experience in another thread on the forum. The opinions on that thread were all across the board. Some guys think it’s voodoo, some guys think it’s gospel. If you have lug centric wheels, and you are having trouble, I say you need to take special care when you mount and tighten the wheels on your Jeep.
https://wranglertjforum.com/threads/hub-centric-wheel-questions.26958/post-434810
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Thanks Andy, I'll take that into consideration. I have a dial test indicator and can measure wheel lateral run-out, but I can't do radial measurements. I don't have the little wheel adapter to to that, and the tread doesn't have a smooth spot on my all terrain tires. I normally do tighten, as much as I can, all the lug bolts with the wheel in the air, thinking it will center as I do, then set her down to finish. Maybe I need to take a more stringent approach. My vibration at 55 isn't real bad, but enough to annoy me.
If anybody is in the same boat as above. I did get to the bottom of my issues. I had two. I was reluctant to believe I had any issues with the tires or rims because they were new. Turns out my problems were the tires and rims. Fist off, they did not get the balance right on any of the tires when I bought them. Once this was fixed, 90% of the problem was gone. The last 10%, I still had a slight vibration, was the rim run-out. The company I brought the rims from made it right and replaced the steel rims, basically a budget rims made you know where, with aluminum rims that didn't have any run-out. That fixed the last bit of any vibrations. I now have a Jeep that drives like new. Ya!
OP
OP
My shimmy also ended up being my blackrock steel rims. 3 of the rims are bad so l have to keep the two good ones on the front so it doesnt shimmy. I think .040 is max allowed for latteral run out mine is way over that on three of the wheels. I will be getting a set of aluminums soon. The rims im using have been discontinued. I have a feeling this is a lot more common than most think with all the shimmy post.
I bought NEW steel wheels and pulled them out of the box and they only tracked within .200. @Jerry Bransford has me convinced to get good aluminum wheels and his advice is solid on this topic.