THE DEATH WOBBLE THREAD

I believe the DW a frequency thing and most if not all 4x4s with the same axel set up as the Jimny suffer the same. As far as I know nearly all come fitted with steering dampers and shimable king pins.

I've had my 07 Jimny 6 years + it's covered 110k miles tows my boats etc it is a great little work horse. After 25K the DW developed. Ambient temperature change, road surface, just jacking it up or even a sicking calliper would set the DW off. Strangely new Jimnys don't wobble??

I've fitted a steering damper, a 0.010" shim in each top king pin and replaced the steering link track rods ends all to increase steering friction. For me it worked a treat

I think all that is needed is something that will not allow the frequency to develop and that can be hard to find.

Suzuki should have developed a solution years ago and by now been forced to do so.

Suzuki did bring out kingpin shims but dealers and independents may not be up to speed.

Kirkynut

Here is my personal contribution to the issue, which I appear to have successfully resolved!


Short story:
=========

My death wobble was resolved by "leveling" out my wheel rims on a press (they were wobbly) and installing brand new tyres, as the old tyres were wobbly as well. As I did both things at once, one of those (or both) was certainly the cause.



Long story:
=========
My Jimny started to develop death wobble in May 2015. It was made in 2006, a diesel edition.
During the first two months of the issue, it wobbled only when the car is cold (for first 5-10 km of driving, when driving between 60 and 70 km/h).

However, after August, the death wobble developed to be quite severe. The car rattled like an earthquake every time when driving between 60 and 70 km/h. The vibrations would be smaller if the weather is colder, and vice versa, but they would be severe every time.

An experienced mechanic of all terrain vehicles examined the car and drove it for a couple of days. He did not find any imperfection in the steering, suspension or transmission, except a rather slack steering column, but that is normal for Jimnys.
On the other hand, he determined that all my four aluminum rims are a bit wobbly, and that the tyres are rather wobbly (tyres are 4 years old, and have had an adventurous life). So, the rims and tyres became his main suspects.

To test his theory, he swapped various combinations of the rims/tyres and balanced them to get an optimal combination, and put them on the front axle. By doing that joggling, he managed to reduce the death wobble significantly, although the death wobble was still strong.
On the other hand, that method proved that the rims and/or the tyres are definitely one of the causes.

After that I drove my car for a few more months and got fed up even with that "improved" death wobble. I went and bought brand new tyres, and took all my rims to be "leveled" on a press.

I don't know if you have such service in UK, but in my country there are several workshops where they can repair ("level out") steel and aluminum wheel rims by using a press and/or a welder+furnace. They can fix literally ANY damage to the rims. There are cases of completely shattered rims which get 100% repaired. People bring in a rim in a dozen pieces, or even some pieces missing, and those workshops put them together and make them perfectly balanced.

The workshop determined that my three rims are slightly wobbly, and that the fourth rim is a bit more wobbly, so they leveled all four. After that, they cleaned all four rims, especially the side which touches the wheel assembly on the car, and they also cleaned the wheel assemblies on the car.
Then they fitted the brand new tyres onto the rims (taking care to align the factory-marked heaviest point on the tyre with the point on the rim where the valve is). They than balanced the entire wheels. Fitted the best two wheels to the front axle.

That was yesterday.
After that, I drove for approx 200 km on open roads, mostly between 50 and 80 km/h.
NO MORE BL********DY DEATH WOBBLE AT ALL ! ! ! ! !

After all those shaky months, I just can't get used to drive without the death wobble! - I am nostalgically thinking about returning my old tyres back on the car!

A small update to my situation:

I found out just how important wheel balancing and wheel rim / tyre wobbliness is during the last winter.

I drove through some deep snow, and when I passed through, my rims were full of stuck snow. I proceeded driving on a paved road, and my steering wheel shook like an earthquake every time between 60 and 70 km/h ("standard" death wobble).

I stopped, and manually cleaned all the snow from the rims. After that, there was no death wobble.

The stuck snow in the rims acted like a badly distributed weight, disturbing the wheel balance.

This valuable topic has now been transferred to the WIKI part of this website. See www.bigjimny.com/mediawiki/index.php/Death_Wobble

You can update the WIKI with any additional information. Thanks to all who contributed.