Florida B.S. Thread

Well, what do you know? I accomplished my entire chore list today. It's a spring time miracle!

Now if I can just keep the momentum going until tomorrow so I can pull the OGT's rear driveshaft and take her for a test drive on the interstate and see if my vibrations go away. If they do, then I have to put the front half back in and see if they are still gone. If they are, then I need to replace my pinion Ujoint and if that doesn't take care of it, I either need to find the rear half of the driveshaft at the salvage yard, or see if I can get the current one rebalanced.

edit: Either that, or the DC joint is bad, but I don't even want to think about that.

 

Definitely need to have another Taco Tuesday. I'm taking a class M-F, so I couldn't make the last one.

 

We are planning this up coming Tuesday in stuart

 

In class again next week down south, so not sure yet.

 

Good news is it's not my rear driveshaft causing the OGT to try to vibrate herself apart at interstate speed. I removed the rear driveshaft and test drove it on the interstate and the vibration is still there.

Bad news is: I'm out of ideas as to what it might be. It has fairly new upper and lower ball joints, the LCAs are used off a 2001 2WD T4R and they looked alright when I installed them. The UCAs look okay as well. The steering is tight and the wheel bearings were good (I'm going to check them again because the last time I had a vibration this bad it was a front wheel bearing). I'm wondering if my coilovers might be blown out. They've taken enough abuse over the last five and a half years, but if you bounce on the bumper, the truck doesn't bounce more than once after you let go which usually indicates the shocks are good. The bushings on the bottom mount, on the other hand, do look a bit rough. I need to put 883s on her anyway for the winch install, so I may try getting a new set of coilovers.

I hate shotgun troubleshooting. Anybody got any other ideas?

 

Tires out of balance or out of round? Wheel bent?

 

Brand new tires and wheels, dynamically balanced. It was vibrating with the old tires too, which i just put down to them being bias plies and damaged. The new tires ride buttery smooth up until about 60 MPH. I am going to swap them over to the T4R (where they belong anyway) to eliminate that possibility, but I think they are fine. I KNOW the T4R's tires and wheels ride smooth with a tiny vibration in the steering that comes and goes as the beads move around.

 

We're heading up around 10, just sent me a note with a ya or nay.

 

Just got back from Citrus. Had a great time today. Hopefully @GuyHuey will get the videos he took up soon. Weird thing is, I think this is the first time I've gone wheeling and the vehicle has no mud on it. Just a lot of dust. It's as dry as I've ever seen it out there. Even the water hole on the corner of 15 and 20 barely had any water in it. Still looked pretty soft and mushy, but if I had 35s I would have tried it.

 

Great time, I needed a day in the woods. Ill have the videos I shot up as soon as youtube can get them out there.

 

https://youtu.be/So06ubqls3s

 

NATTY..

https://youtu.be/NtmnGxI5sPk

 

Me

My son is the funniest in this one "He won't, he's done this many times".

https://youtu.be/3TijEnyeQhY

 

Lee, and my neighbor in the stock JK.

https://youtu.be/4vY7wn4wILY

 

That new exhaust does sound really good in the video. That deep tone was exactly what I was going for.

 

I was thinking the same thing, sounds great!

 

JK or JL? (or whatever the newest generation is called, lol.)

 

Oh, not sure. Most likely you're right. I may have named my son CJ, but I'm no Jeep expert.

 

I was impressed with how his bone stock Jeep performed. Aired down with a good driver would have been even more impressive.

 

I reccomend some rocker protection and a good CB. Then for him to wheel it for awhile to see if that's what he wants to do. If he really wants to use it offroad and be happy or if he just wants to look cool are two different paths and one is much less $$$ than the other.