Lil Red SJ - steering vibration

James' SJ flew through its first MOT with us last week and then typically we detected a vibration in the steering  this weekend despite nothing being reported.

Now long term Jimny owners know all about "Death Wobble" and worn Kingpin bearings, however before stripping it all apart there are some initial basic checks, the first of which is wheel balancing.

As the SJ is new to us, we are not familiar with anything that has been done to it in the past, therefore I went around and checked for balancing on the wheels.

The first check was whether there was any sign of previous balancing. The front passenger wheel looked ok, there are balance weights stuck to the wheel.

However the front drivers side had no weights at all, and no indication that any weights had ever been fitted (no marks or glue). This is strange so a quick look at the rear was in order. One of the rears also had no marks at all, but the other rear had a balance weight on it and a mark where another balance weight had been. This implies that this wheel was on the front at some point and was possibly accidently swapped with a rear wheel at some point.

Therefore I swapped them back, in doing so I found a balance weight trapped in the rear drum!!  So the next stage is off to the tyre centre to get the balancing sorted.