Jeep wandering

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Foofighter3

New member
Hey all,

I’m looking to diagnose some wandering on my 08 2 door, 98k miles. It has a leveling kit so 2” up front and 1” in back, rancho geometry correction bracket bolted to the 2” lift hole and 33” tires. All new ball joints, new shocks, everything suspension related is torqued to spec, track bar bolts and lower control arm bolts have been replaced with proper ones, all control arm bushings look great, and the toe in is good. It really wanders in kind of a scary way when I’m going 30-45ish mph and it just feels really loose when I’m doing slight turns to change lanes like the wheels just want to do what they want to do. It does this on nice and smooth pavement as well. No vibrations and no clunking. I’ve tried tire pressures from 25-35 thinking maybe its tramlining (I think that the word?) Is it possible this is a bad steering box? What do you think? Thanks all.
 
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Sounds like your caster angle is too low. Should be ~ minus 4 degrees. Try moving the upper control arms to the next hole back towards the rear on your geo brackets, which will increase the castor angle to be more negative. Should help with your wondering.




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bmkrinne said:
Sounds like your caster angle is too low. Should be ~ minus 4 degrees. Try moving the upper control arms to the next hole back towards the rear on your geo brackets, which will increase the castor angle to be more negative. Should help with your wondering.




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Thanks maybe I’ll try this. Is it standard practice with the geometry correction bracket to use the 3” hole with a 2” lift?
 
BaddestCross said:
What kind of tires and how old? Balanced recently?

Did you check the drag link TREs? How much play in the steering before it actually moves anything?



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The tires are pretty old, 6-8 years and have maybe seen 40-50k miles. I think the tread looks okay but maybe its about time to get new ones. They haven’t been balanced since I got them.. Can out of balance tires cause a loose wandering steering feeling or would that just add vibration? Maybe a better way to describe the problem is when i change lanes the Jeep kind of quickly turns itsel left and/or right. It will also sometimes veer right when I accelerate while I’m doing 40-45.

The drag link is a brand new synergy HD drag link. I think I can move the steering wheel maybe 1 inch before I start feeling it turning although I haven’t done a visual inspection of that yet to verify the wheels aren’t actually turning for that first inch. I’ll do that tomorrow.
 
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Foofighter3 said:
Thanks maybe I’ll try this. Is it standard practice with the geometry correction bracket to use the 3” hole with a 2” lift?
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I’m not familiar with the Rancho brackets , but the AEV geo brackets would have the 2” lift set in the farthest front hole. Increasing the caster (rolling the axle backwards) would help stabilize the steering.




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Wandering is usually a caster issue but I'm not familiar with the Geo brackets. What your saying about the steering being loose is typically drag link TREs. Have someone turn the wheel back and forth and take a look at the TREs on the drag link and even tie rod. Should be no play in those by feeling and if you visually see play then they are real worn out

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Foofighter3 said:
The tires are pretty old, 6-8 years and have maybe seen 40-50k miles. I think the tread looks okay but maybe its about time to get new ones. They haven’t been balanced since I got them.. Can out of balance tires cause a loose wandering steering feeling or would that just add vibration? Maybe a better way to describe the problem is when i change lanes the Jeep kind of quickly turns itsel left and/or right. It will also sometimes veer right when I accelerate while I’m doing 40-45.

The drag link is a brand new synergy HD drag link. I think I can move the steering wheel maybe 1 inch before I start feeling it turning although I haven’t done a visual inspection of that yet to verify the wheels aren’t actually turning for that first inch. I’ll do that tomorrow.
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If you can move it an inch before the wheels start turning, make sure the drag link is seated and torqued properly. Ask me how I know. [emoji15]

Does the feeling go away above or below the 45mph range you stated? If so, it could be the tires...



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I’m wondering if you even need geo brackets at this low of a lift.


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desertrunner said:
Wandering is usually a caster issue but I'm not familiar with the Geo brackets. What your saying about the steering being loose is typically drag link TREs. Have someone turn the wheel back and forth and take a look at the TREs on the drag link and even tie rod. Should be no play in those by feeling and if you visually see play then they are real worn out

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The drag link is brand new with like 200 miles on it. I did just notice the TREs on it are not parallel with one another, they’re maybe 30 degrees off so the whole drag link’s movement room is limited. I’ll try lining them up this weekend. Could that cause the weird steering?
 
jab1719 said:
I’m wondering if you even need geo brackets at this low of a lift.


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They are marketed as being for 2-4”. There are different ways to install it with separate 2-3-4” holes to attach the upper control arm. However maybe it would be worth it to try taking them out.
 
When I bought my jeep it had a 2.5 Rough Country lift and drove horrible. I replaced shocks and it helped but it wandered like crazy. I installed the Ranch Geo brackets on the 3in hole and it totally changed the way it drove for the better.
jab1719 said:
I’m wondering if you even need geo brackets at this low of a lift.


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Fordracing19 said:
When I bought my jeep it had a 2.5 Rough Country lift and drove horrible. I replaced shocks and it helped but it wandered like crazy. I installed the Ranch Geo brackets on the 3in hole and it totally changed the way it drove for the better.

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Yea I Get it but he has 1.5 inch leveling kit not a 2.5” lift that probably gave you a little more than that as well. I’m running the brackets on my 3” lift but when I did a 2” spacer lift front and back I didn’t need the brackets.


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1) check toe
2) check caster
3) make sure draglink & trackbar are parallel to each other
4) make sure you have no slop on steering or ball joints

#3 was my wandering problem with only being a few degrees difference


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Did you torque your control arms with weight on or off the vehicle. I had a similar issue after installing all 8 CAs because I torqued them without weight on the wheels. I loosened up the bolts bounced the Jeep to reseat/settle, and re torqued to spec. Seemed to fix the issue.


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