Hi guys, new to zooks, and need some help.

When I bought my 88 Samurai it had a little noise up front. I changed the wheel bearings and the king pin bearings. Now it's got a severe wobble over 30mph. It does have a small 3 inch lift, but didn't wobble before even with the bad bearings.

Not sure what's wrong. Would really appreciate any ideas you guys might have.

Check :
Ball joints
Tire balance
Alignment
It's more than likely one of the three or all of the above....Boxcar...

Check the steering stabilizer and that brackets that hold the stabilizer are not broke. The stock stabilizer is crap, epically with big tires. The stock stabilizer is stiff but you'll notice about half and inch to and inch of movement until the rod begins to act like a strut allowing for the death wobble. I got a ranchero (sp?) stabilizer for 2 dollars at a swap meet and welded some brackets to the frame and steering arm. Have had no problems since.

Is it a 3" lift with shackles?

Did you reset your toe after bearings and bushings?

Could you attach a picture?

-Eric

Yes 3" lift. Can't get pics till later tonight.

No I didn't reset the toe. How do I do that???

An alignment shop has the equipment to measure and set toe-in properly.

Check everything in the front end.  Including bushings on the springs, idiling arms, pitman arms, kingpins and recheck for bearing play

Did you actually torque the wheel bearings or use the hammer/chisel method?  Thats the first thing to pop in my mind if it didn't do it before.

OK, I checked the wheels and one seemed to be off. DOH!

After fixing that it seems to not shake so much. Still has a shimmy at high speeds(45), but that seems to have been my death wobble. Unless of course the wobble was temperamental.

I did check the toe. Seemed to be about a degree.

There is still a little shake at high speed, just a little though. Could be wheel balance, u joint, I don't know.

Tell me about the dampener?

It has free play before it stiffens. So it allows for a little bit of wobble with no resistance. The little wobble gains momentum and over powers the stabilizer when I braked hard from highway speeds or hit a substantial bump on one side of the vehicle. It would also slightly shake above 45mph. This was how mine acted at least.
Seemed like common sense to me to get rid of it. And again after replacing the stabilizer I've not had a single problem with wobble.
You may be able to go to the junkyard and find a good stabilizer. Then you could just mount it back in place without fabricating new bracketry. I don't know though if the free play is something that just came with these stabilizers or if mine was just 25 years old and warn out. My stock stabilizer would get really stiff once it finally did start dampening.
Good luck to you.
Parker.

A lot of people talk about the adjustment on the steering box/gear to fix the "death wobble". I have never done it. This comes from another forum, but good info...."try adjusting the adjuster in the top of the steering box, its a bolt in the top of the steering box with a slot in the top & a nut around it losen the nut with a wrench then tighten the bolt with a flat head screwdriver & re tighten the nut, don't over tighten the bolt remember its an adjuster not a fastener "