Picked up a 99 on a whim. Fix death wobble or replace with new lift?

jeepbiscuits

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Joined
May 23, 2023
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43
Location
Oakland, NJ
I purchased a 99 TJ Sahara for $6500 recently. 162k miles, 6cyl, manual, new soft top. Looks like a 4" lift with 35s. Body good condition. Apparently the frame was replaced by previous owner and is printine. Intend to use it offroad maybe 4-5x per year at Rausch Creek park. Other than that just round town.

The only problems (so far) are:

1) Death wobble.
2) I dislike the stance. I prefer tall and narrow so I'm thinking 3-4.5" lift with 33's

So where do I go from here?
  1. Just fix death wobble then address stance with new wheels and tires
  2. Install entirely new lift kit because my OCD wants to design my jeep MY way for optimal offroad and on road handling
For #1 part of me just says replace whatever needs replacing but my OCD says replace ALL THE THINGS which leads me to #2.

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I purchased a 99 TJ Sahara for $6500 recently.
welcome to the forum and congrats on your TJ 🍻
Just fix death wobble then address stance with new wheels and tires
Can you provide pictures of all the individual steering components?
lnstall entirely new lift kit because my OCD wants to design my jeep MY way for optimal offroad and on road handling
Can you provide pictures of all the individual suspension components?
 
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Welcome to the forum...
Good looking Jeep; post some more pictures.
Death Wobble (Oscillating) can be caused by numerous front end problems:

1. Tires out of balance
2. Alignment
3. Worn tie rod ends
4. Loose tracbar or worn bushings
5. Loose control arms or worn bushings
6. Worn hub bearings

It's time to get the tires balanced and perform a dry steering test to determine what problems exist (as Andy G. posted above).
 
DIY alignment for toe in, rear tires to the front to see if one of those is out of ballance, look for a dropped pitman arm and go to stock, add a spring spacer up front to level the rake, new steering stabilizer (but it won't fix wobble only mask it).

I got wobble in Moab, when my trackbar upper bolt came loose. Cranked it back down with the big wrench and it stopped. So check everything for loosness.

Drive it for a while.

Save up because this place will make you spend money.
 
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Describe your Death Wobble. Does it go away if you speed up enough? Does it feel like the Jeep is out of control when it happens or is it controllable?

100% death wobble. Thing shakes like a moab bomb went off. Will not stop until I slow to a stop. Triggered by a bump usually when already in a turn. I would not even think of speeding up it is so bad.
 
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100% death wobble. Thing shakes like a moab bomb went off. Will not stop until I slow to a stop. Triggered by a bump usually when already in a turn. I would not even think of speeding up it is so bad.
True DW like you have often is caused by nothing more than a badly balanced front tire, often but not always accompanied by something not being tight enough like the track bar. The very worst OMG life-passing-before-my-eyes DW I ever had was when my '97 TJ was still near-new and nothing was loose or worn... it was caused by the balancing weights having come off one of the front tires. Having just that tire rebalanced completely cured the DW. I don't think that TJ ever had another case of DW before it was stolen 11-12 years ago. Same thing with my present TJ... all my DW events have been caused by an imperfectly balanced tire and just once was it accompanied by a track bar bolt I hadn't completely tightened down.
 
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There is a lot of play at the frame side of the track bar.

You can’t have anything causing the front to oscillate- Nor anything loose to allow it to.

It is not all cut and dry but generally if you have really well balanced tires and good connections you’re going to be doing really good.

Even though we don’t see it very much there are a lot of things that can happen- A broken tire belt, low tire....I even know of one rare case where a defective new rotor created it.

But leaving the rare and freaky out of the equation it’s all about the tires and connections.
 
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I got a DW while accelerating a curved onramp, after swapping out my winter tires to my summer BFG KO2 (on their own rims). My right front tire is the spare and has about 1/32-1/16 inch more tread than the left front tire. Would a nominally larger tire on one side cause DW or should I look into another cause?
 
I got a DW while accelerating a curved onramp, after swapping out my winter tires to my summer BFG KO2 (on their own rims). My right front tire is the spare and has about 1/32-1/16 inch more tread than the left front tire. Would a nominally larger tire on one side cause DW or should I look into another cause?

I doubt the slight variance in tire diameter would cause death wobble. Are all 4 tires inflated to the same pressure? I experienced death wobble recently because I neglected to properly inflate one of my tires after off-roading and it was only at 12 psi
 
I’m kind of in the same boat as you @jeepbiscuits I’m pretty fresh to the TJ community myself. I purchased a low mileage LJR a few months ago. I don’t have any wobble with it, but the PO had installed a RE lift kit and slapped 35s on it. The kit that is on it, is thrashed, beat to heck and a few of the bushings are shot. The 35s with the lift had smashed the sit out of the inside of the fenders at some point.

I ended up going with your 2nd option for basically the same reasoning on top of getting it right for the 35s. Which wasn’t cheap as it was a new RockJock lift, shocks, body lift, MML, Savvy skids, Currie Currectlync, and most likely new driveshafts. Now I’m planning on keeping it and enjoying the hell out of it when I’m “done”, so that how I rationalized it to myself… 😂 But If that’s your thought process also and funds allow I’d spend the pennies, be done with it, otherwise you might beat yourself up as time goes on with it. I’d also start with maybe getting the Currectlync first, it would be a definite upgrade and might sort out the death wobble at the same time. There’s tons of resources and dudes willing to spread knowledge on here. It’s truly blessing for anything TJ/LJ.
 
I’m kind of in the same boat as you @jeepbiscuits I’m pretty fresh to the TJ community myself. I purchased a low mileage LJR a few months ago. I don’t have any wobble with it, but the PO had installed a RE lift kit and slapped 35s on it. The kit that is on it, is thrashed, beat to heck and a few of the bushings are shot. The 35s with the lift had smashed the sit out of the inside of the fenders at some point.

I ended up going with your 2nd option for basically the same reasoning on top of getting it right for the 35s. Which wasn’t cheap as it was a new RockJock lift, shocks, body lift, MML, Savvy skids, Currie Currectlync, and most likely new driveshafts. Now I’m planning on keeping it and enjoying the hell out of it when I’m “done”, so that how I rationalized it to myself… 😂 But If that’s your thought process also and funds allow I’d spend the pennies, be done with it, otherwise you might beat yourself up as time goes on with it. I’d also start with maybe getting the Currectlync first, it would be a definite upgrade and might sort out the death wobble at the same time. There’s tons of resources and dudes willing to spread knowledge on here. It’s truly blessing for anything TJ/LJ.

Holy hell. Looks into that lift kit and thats some $$$$....damn. I mean its a jeep so this is to be expected haha. Just gotta figure out how deep I wanna go.
 
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I don’t think you’d probably need to go that deep to run 33’s. My lift was thrashed so it didn’t make sense to try and rejuvenate it, and the Jeep had brand new 35s on it so that’s why I went that route. I’m still new to this myself, there’s dudes on here that have forgotten more than I’ll likely ever know. So, I’d definitely follow their advice. Do some digging on here and you’ll quickly figure out who they are and see what’s usually required to do what you want when you do decide.
 
First thing I would do is rotate the tires. If it goes away then you know it is tire related. I did this when my 19 F250 developed DW and found out one of the front tires was out of round.
Anyone who has experienced DW at 70mph will attest to the come to Jesus moment it is.
 
alright finally got time to take some shots and a movie on the suspension. Not the best so will likely do it again. Got time monday so gonna get it up on some stands and do a detailed look over. I see some movement for sure.

Suspension Gallery