Thursday, August 18, 2011
I have been struggling with Heather's Jeep for about 6 months now. About a month ago I was done with the thing. I actually talked to her about burning it or crashing it while flying back from PA last week. In the past 2 months it's gotten new tires, 2 tire balances, 3 alignments, new tracbar, new draglink and all tierods, new steering stabilizer, new AC compressor. After all this, it had some weird shimmy at 49-51mph. Normally this is indicative of a tire balance issue but I had it done twice in 2 weeks with no change. I also swapped a set of tires from a known good vehicle onto it and there was no change. I had a buddy that built me a custom steering setup for it look at it and he couldn't find anything other than a slightly loose tracbar bolt. Then I dropped it off with another buddy while we were in PA and let him deal with it. He also found a few issues but couldn't solve the shimmy problem. I had no clue what else to do with it. I found a Dana 30 axle in Denver that I was considering installing (but dreading) just to see if that would work. Before I did that, I decided to get it aligned once more with a different guy that had a laser rack. I took it to him today and walked up the street to get the worst sandwich I've ever had and a beer. After I got back Clark said the alignment was a tad off and...the front tires were about 1/4 ounce off. That's significant. He threw me the keys and said he didn't feel the shimmy any more. Yeah right. I took it out and was stunned. We have spent about 2 grand on that thing in the last 2 months and the issue was the result of lazy mechanics. We're thrilled to not have to drive it off a cliff. If you're local and in need of a good/trustworthy mechanic...let me know and I'll get you in touch with Clark.
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