acer99

I recently added a ZJ tie rod, Rough Country control arm drops, and Rusty's fixed length upper control arms. My lower control arms are stock.

The steering has been feeling floaty on the road; not as "tight" as before.

The highway, at 65 - 70mph on a very windy day, was a white knuckle experience as I was being blown all over the place. My steering wheel was straight before the alignment, but afterwards its slightly turned to the right. And I don't know if its my imagination or what, but when I drive down the road I swear that the Jeep will shift or slightly change directions and the steering wheel straightens out.

When I let go of the steering wheel, there isn't any pull to the left or right, it drives straight. Maybe this is an indication of something with my steering setup?

Here are the results of my alignment:



I was looking up tie rod roll, but I'm not so sure that's the cause as I haven't really changed the geometry... just maybe the caster because of the upper control arms.

Also, the upper control arms have two sets of mounting holes for the axle. One set is further away than the other on the side that mounts with the axle. I have both control arms using the mounts closer to the "frame". I figure the holes for mounting further away were if I was rolling tires larger than the 31" that I have.

Maybe what I need are a set of adjustable lower control arms to increase the caster? Anyone know why my caster would be so different from the left to right?

Thanks everyone!

acer99

Here is a closer pic of the alignment results:

acer99

I found a thread on another forum that states the caster should be as close to +7.00 as possible, which is about halfway between the recommended +5.25 and +8.50.

Looks like I need to get some adjustable lower control arms and go from there.

UPDATE: I just ordered some Rough Country adjustable lower control arms. Though I'm not sure what to adjust each as to get a matching +7 degrees on both sides. I'll Google around for a calculator of some sort.

What do you guys think?

cherokee90

Are the uppers stock length?

acer99

I don't think so. I just wrote to Rusty's to ask what the length was. It's hard right now for me to run outside and crawl under to measure - raining today.

Here are the UCAs that I put on:
http://www.rustysoffroad.com/jeep-su...-xj-tj-zj.html

93XJLI

yea, you can clearly see your caster is way off. that is 100% the "floating" you feel.

acer99

Thanks! It feels good to know that I'm not imagining this.

So I ordered some adjustable LCAs, but I gotta figure out what to adjust the length of both of them to, especially since it appears that one side is going to need more adjusting than the other.

I'll probably need to take another trip to the alignment shop afterwards. I'm worried that they would just stick a shim behind the control arm instead of adjusting it.