Sorry to be a pedant but can you please direct me to any documented evidence of a single fatality being attributed to “death wobble” in a car? It really needs to be reclassified as “soiled my pants” wobble, even the ambulance chasers putting up Jeep owner class actions admit no one has actually died due to “death” wobble.
How many deaths are caused by a driver, "losing control" of a vehicle. Will we ever truly know the cause in every case? No. I was just insinuating that it could place a driver and their passenger into a dangerous situation.
Who knows, but I always attribute the term to either the fact that you effectively have to come to a stop before the issue resolves or my favorite is the death of the suspension design on a built rig. First time I ran into Death Wobble back in the 90's was when I had a guy bring his hugely built Jeep with 44's in to have me solve the death wobble. The Jeep was a mess though. Death wobble is nuts with 44" super swampers. Both versions are my own interpretation and preference for the origins of the term though I'm sure neither are right.
Guess what gets my goat is a long standing and common description of an inconvenient event well known in 4X4 circles gets twisted by the net to be the cause of fatalities and something that is coming to kill you. Maybe that’s just the post truth world we are living in (who needs fact checking?)
Stop your rational talk right now!
It is entirely plausible that the steering stabilizer is overly powerful on the grenadier by design and that this fact is unrelated to any death wobble despite the attempts to rationalize it as being required for something.
Good pickup! If you zoom in on his hands in that scene they are not moving, maybe a light touch on the wheel instead of hanging on for grim death and losing a thumb?
I've honestly never seen Death Wobble on dirt. Though I don't see why it wouldn't happen on hard packed dirt. I just don't associate it with loose surface and lower speeds like this, especially with the smaller tires of a stock IG.
That video did the rounds in 2022 and was discussed at the time. I can't recall if it was posted on here or not. Someone rationalised that it may be due to the long travel coil suspension bouncing around the corner and we're seeing the panhard rod causing the axle housing to shift laterally against the drag link which is more or less being held stationary by the driver. The result is a shimmy movement of the steering arms and wheels. I can see the argument.
That's called bump steer. It's a common problem on solid axle trucks. Early Broncos really like to do it when you lift them. It's a bizarre feeling and annoying. It takes a fair bit of travel to move the tires that much but who knows. I'm not seeing much vertical movement in the video.
I assume they ran several different stabilisers across the PT and PTO fleet vehicles to find a reasonable compromise between shimmy control and driveability.
