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Death wobbles now in higher speed band after king pin replacement

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11 Jul 2025 12:46 #261182 by goldilocks
Hi folks, hoping somebody can help me out with this.

My wife's Jimny has had death wobbles for a little while now. They always appear between 65 and 75 km/h. I followed a pretty straight forward YouTube video to replace the king pins and in the process also replaced the wheel bearings and seals.

The death wobbles are still there, although much less noticeable and, for some reason, now appearing between 80 and 90 km/h. I've read elsewhere that it might just need a wheel balance, does that sound right? Is it possible I've done something wrong with the replacement?

Any advice appreciated.

Cheers, Caleb

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11 Jul 2025 14:23 #261186 by jackonlyjack
I would say get wheels balanced 
If still there after replace parts 

I always replace the 4 steering tie rod ends when doing kingpin bearings 
If wobble persists then shock bushes panhard bushes, and finally radius arm bushes 
At some point wobble should disappear 

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11 Jul 2025 14:24 #261187 by facade
Wheel wobble due to imbalance is normally worst at around 55MPH, which is 88.5 KPH, so pretty likely you need the wheels balancing.

If it suddenly breaks, go back to the last thing that you did before it broke and start looking there :)

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11 Jul 2025 19:56 #261191 by fordem
First - not every wobble is a "death wobble", and if you have a wobble that you can define a "speed range" on, it's NOT death wobble - that's a "speed wobble" or shimmy, most likely caused by out of balance wheels/tyres.

When death wobble sets in, pretty much the only way to get it to stop is to bring the vehicle to a standstill, or near standstill - it takes a very brave person to try to accelerate through a death wobble.

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11 Jul 2025 20:11 #261192 by Luke5305
I had wobble appear,around 45-55mph, enough to make me slow down, I swapped the front wheels across the axle and the wobble/shake has disappeared. Might be worth a try as it's free.

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