TheWicked
New Member
Are all of you guys using leveling pucks too?
I have an 06 LJ 6 speed. Got it with like 68,000 miles. It had a 4" RC lift, transfer case drop, junk Falken Wildpeaks and it did not shimmy, shake, or harmonically vibrate. It had aftermarket bumpers.
The front wasn't level with the back. I put a winch on and the front was sagging even more so I bought Currie 4" springs, the ones with "extra 1" of height is necessary to compensate for heavy winches, bumpers, etc ". Looking back that statement applied to JK's but whatever. Shocks broke taking them off so I replaced them too.
Still wasn't level. Still no shimmy or wobble or anything like that. A few months later I put on 1" poly spacers to level it out. I think the front was like 3/4" lower than the back. That unleashed hell. Death wobble, shimmy, all that. I took it in for an alignment and described everything. Naive me though I had effected caster that bad. The reputable 4x4 shop said the drag link was shot. Replaced that, alignment, balanced tires, said the shimmy was still there but not as bad. Said the tires were to blame at this point.
Fast forward 6 months and I buy new wheels and tires (Mickey Thompson atz 33"). Get those put on and the same shake/shimmy was there. This is where I went down the rabbit hole.
I replaced everything. Ball joints, u joints, tie rod (zj conversion), wheel bearings, adjustable track bar. A lot of this stuff was either shot or close to it. Thought that would have nailed it but the shake was still there. I go full retard at this point and replace all 8 control arms with adjustable MC's, Tom W driveshaft, advance adapters SYE kit. Removed the transfer case drop. Replaced the transmission mount and the passenger side engine mount (I have the other one, just didn't do it yet, they didn't look too bad, although the TC drop had them all kinds of deformed). Set pinion angles. And while it rode better than it ever had there was still some shake (45-55mph).
I found out about MT's warranty and that if it takes more than 1% of the tire weight to balance them they can be replaced. Two had like 14-16 ounces of weight so the shop replaced them and re-balanced (road force) all the tires for free. They did an alignment too, although they didn't set all the control arms like I asked. They are double adjustable and when I installed them I set them to the length of the arms I was taking off.
I don't want to call it a shake but it's like a harmonic, just like everyone is talking about in this thread. I have not re geared from the 3.73 that it came with. Going down a hill at like 55, in neutral, the gear shift and steering wheel both have the same ~55hz vibration. The wheel moves a little but not a full fledged shake. It changes depending on the day, the road, temperature, and psi.
I'm in the middle of trying to fix that now. I'm not convinced that my axles are where they could optimally be. The MC instructions would have had me put the arms longer than the ones I was replacing. But doing them one at a time like I did I didn't have much of an option.
But back to the pucks, are all you guys using something like that to level your jeeps? I can't say I had an issue before them. I thought about taking them off but these springs are super long and I hate using spring compressors. Could a (near) level jeep be more problematic that one with a lower front?
Also, I have a mountain bike with big fat tires. I get the same kind of up and down oscillation on the street. In that case it's 100% from tires.
I have an 06 LJ 6 speed. Got it with like 68,000 miles. It had a 4" RC lift, transfer case drop, junk Falken Wildpeaks and it did not shimmy, shake, or harmonically vibrate. It had aftermarket bumpers.
The front wasn't level with the back. I put a winch on and the front was sagging even more so I bought Currie 4" springs, the ones with "extra 1" of height is necessary to compensate for heavy winches, bumpers, etc ". Looking back that statement applied to JK's but whatever. Shocks broke taking them off so I replaced them too.
Still wasn't level. Still no shimmy or wobble or anything like that. A few months later I put on 1" poly spacers to level it out. I think the front was like 3/4" lower than the back. That unleashed hell. Death wobble, shimmy, all that. I took it in for an alignment and described everything. Naive me though I had effected caster that bad. The reputable 4x4 shop said the drag link was shot. Replaced that, alignment, balanced tires, said the shimmy was still there but not as bad. Said the tires were to blame at this point.
Fast forward 6 months and I buy new wheels and tires (Mickey Thompson atz 33"). Get those put on and the same shake/shimmy was there. This is where I went down the rabbit hole.
I replaced everything. Ball joints, u joints, tie rod (zj conversion), wheel bearings, adjustable track bar. A lot of this stuff was either shot or close to it. Thought that would have nailed it but the shake was still there. I go full retard at this point and replace all 8 control arms with adjustable MC's, Tom W driveshaft, advance adapters SYE kit. Removed the transfer case drop. Replaced the transmission mount and the passenger side engine mount (I have the other one, just didn't do it yet, they didn't look too bad, although the TC drop had them all kinds of deformed). Set pinion angles. And while it rode better than it ever had there was still some shake (45-55mph).
I found out about MT's warranty and that if it takes more than 1% of the tire weight to balance them they can be replaced. Two had like 14-16 ounces of weight so the shop replaced them and re-balanced (road force) all the tires for free. They did an alignment too, although they didn't set all the control arms like I asked. They are double adjustable and when I installed them I set them to the length of the arms I was taking off.
I don't want to call it a shake but it's like a harmonic, just like everyone is talking about in this thread. I have not re geared from the 3.73 that it came with. Going down a hill at like 55, in neutral, the gear shift and steering wheel both have the same ~55hz vibration. The wheel moves a little but not a full fledged shake. It changes depending on the day, the road, temperature, and psi.
I'm in the middle of trying to fix that now. I'm not convinced that my axles are where they could optimally be. The MC instructions would have had me put the arms longer than the ones I was replacing. But doing them one at a time like I did I didn't have much of an option.
But back to the pucks, are all you guys using something like that to level your jeeps? I can't say I had an issue before them. I thought about taking them off but these springs are super long and I hate using spring compressors. Could a (near) level jeep be more problematic that one with a lower front?
Also, I have a mountain bike with big fat tires. I get the same kind of up and down oscillation on the street. In that case it's 100% from tires.