Bruiser

So I’ve been having some terrible handling on the highway for some time now. Sometimes it’s even a white knuckled experience with severe wander. It will swing hard to one side of the lane and then it feels like the sway bar isn’t connected and it’ll dip, I’ll adjust and end up on the other side of the lane in a flash where the same thing will happen in repeat.

Back when I installed the new knuckles, synergy ball joints and control arms, I took it to the “best” steering shop in town to dial it in and give me a solid base going forward. I also had them adjust my caster to 6degs to counter the fairly bad spring bow I was having.

Well, 6 was feeling pretty awful so decided to return to factory caster and deal with the spring issue using Eddie’s Recent tip.

Anyway, I went to make the adjustment last night and found that it was set to 6.4 degrees and that all of my front control arms were at different lengths! The lowers were nearly 3/8 inch off and the uppers were off too, I guess to compensate? I don’t know how they could be so stupid.

I reset the lengths, set the caster to 4.5 degrees and went for a test drive. Feels so much better. There’s still a VERY slight wander that occurs pretty slowly compared to before. I’m going to check the rear control arms to make sure they’re square and then adjust the toe if needed.

Ugh… perhaps there’s finally a fix in the near future.🤞
 
Wow, what a mess! Sorry to hear you've had to deal with all this. In the end, nobody is gonna do your Jeep right better than you. Best of luck to you in getting things squared away.
Thanks, Eddie. Yeah, it is a mess. Wish I would’ve thought to measure my control arms along time ago.
 
So I’ve been having some terrible handling on the highway for some time now. Sometimes it’s even a white knuckled experience with severe wander. It will swing hard to one side of the lane and then it feels like the sway bar isn’t connected and it’ll dip, I’ll adjust and end up on the other side of the lane in a flash where the same thing will happen in repeat.
Well Mike you bought a Jeep!

Lol, in all seriousness that’s a bummer you had to go through that! I had a similar (but not that bad 🤣) experience in which I set the front lowers too long initially when trying to correct some spring bow - dialed them back a little over a year ago and all has been well since - glad you caught it before it got worse… in which your Jeep would fly away spontaneously!
 
Well Mike you bought a Jeep!

Lol, in all seriousness that’s a bummer you had to go through that! I had a similar (but not that bad 🤣) experience in which I set the front lowers too long initially when trying to correct some spring bow - dialed them back a little over a year ago and all has been well since - glad you caught it before it got worse… in which your Jeep would fly away spontaneously!
Yeah, I know, wander = Jeep, but not like this! Haha. Glad you got yours worked out! 👍
 
Thanks, Eddie. Yeah, it is a mess. Wish I would’ve thought to measure my control arms along time ago.

Late on this but I'm convinced that some of the squirrely nature of the JL steering is due to the stupid electric steering on these. The JL's just never feel as solid as the JK's
 
Late on this but I'm convinced that some of the squirrely nature of the JL steering is due to the stupid electric steering on these. The JL's just never feel as solid as the JK's
Due to the fact JLs are prone to Death Wobbles without a steering stabilizer, I think it’s due to a flexy track bar and/or drag link.
 
Due to the fact JLs are prone to Death Wobbles without a steering stabilizer, I think it’s due to a flexy track bar and/or drag link.

I thought so too until I swapped all of that with Synergy stuff & it still doesn't feel as direct and "planted" as the JK. Especially driving the 2019 & 2017 back to back. Honestly it's one of the reasons I bought the 2017 - it had 20k miles on it so it's kinda like having one in the bank for later on.
I much prefer the ergonomics of the JK to the JL as well. No JL bashing as they are nice, but overall, I much prefer the JK.
If only JK's had that 8 sp auto....
 
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