Topic: front end wobble

[kneedownnate]

I'm driviin around work today and hear what sounds like something rattling against the roll bar, turn off the radio and try and get it to do it again.  It's coming from the front, and I thought it was maybe the left front bearings, but it's tight and quiet, jacked up the right front and it's WAY loose.  I just checked these during deer season and they were no worse than they had been for the last few years, but it finally decided to work loose.  I planned on upgrading to fj40 rotors, ifs calipers and all new bearings races and seals, but not this soon!  I priced everyting I need, minus the knuckle rebuild kits and it's over $300.  Hopefully I can get away with cleaning and regreasing the bearings for now, but as loose as it is I dunno, and slowly start buying the upgrade parts and put them on a spare axle to make it a quick and easy job since it's also my DD.  I was gonna use my ifs calipers, but rebuilt ones are only about $45, and I'd hate to go to all this effort just to have the calipers go out soon, or I could probably get a rebuild kit for mine.  This is the third big dump life has taken on me this month, but the silver lining is there, somewhere,   Nate

[Willy Mammoth]

I would be concerned about the spindles getting worn out. They are pretty expensive to have to replace. At least replace the bearings now to keep from damaging the spindles if they arn't already.

[kneedownnate [OP]]

I was kinda concerned about that too, but if they're bad I can rob some off my parts axle to spare the expense.  Once it warms up a little I'm gonna go out and pull it apart and assess the damage,   Nate

[kneedownnate [OP]]

I tore it all down today and surprisingly the bearings and spindles looked great, bought a new seal, cleaned it all up and repacked the bearings and slapped it all back together.  I'm trying a little dab of anti-sieze on the conical washers cause they always seem to get stuck on, not sure if it'll help but it's worth a try.  Once it was all together it was tighter but still wabbled from front to back, looked from the front and the tie rod is moving a lot.  Guess it gives me something to do tomorrow, but I wanted to wait till I bought all the xover stuff so I wasn't buying parts twice.  Oh well, still more fun than driving my 2wd,   Nate

[MidgetMike]

I just rebiult my axle and i had a little bit of steering slop that I thought was from the colum turns out it was the trunion bearings, but there wasn't any  slop in the axle when you lifted  it off the ground one of my races was broken in half. Wierd part is all my steering arm bolts were torqued right. 

[kneedownnate [OP]]

SNAP!  Hope that doesn't happen to me, been pretty lucky so far, but then I don't wheel too hard either.  I just don't wanna dump too much green into it right now, gonna rebuild a spare axle on the bench so's I can just switch em out real quick like.  New bearings in and out, fj40 rotors, rblt ifs calipers, st stl lines, hd birfs or birf eliminators, bla bla bla.   Gotta save as much as possible so I can knock it out all at once,   Nate