so I have steering but it's extremely loose and unstable any advice?

 

Have some one steer your rig while you are looking at everything underneath. I found several issues like track bar bracket was hollowed out, upper control arm bushings were almost none existent. Mine was very, very scary too. but I think I have finally got it dialed in.

 

i would check all the TRE's, ball joints, steering gear box, etc

 

All of the above.

 

Mine too, I already tried replacing the box with a used rebuilt box from Autozone. It was almost as bad as the one I took off, tried tightening up the adjuster on top, helped only slightly.

Where can I buy a good box ?

 

What size lift do you have?

 

I must say I did almost everything that could be done, some things that may have not been a part of the issue. But I found that if there is anything allowing the axle to shift at all it magnifies the lose of control at the steering wheel. My steering has been great for 6 months or so. Then just recently it started to feel a little loose again. I started checking around and found that the control arm bracket that mounts to the frame had came loose, tightened things back up and the steering was once again good.

There is something to be said about checking and tightening everything you can at least quarterly regardless of wither you take it off road or not. My XJ is not daily driven, so I am now going to try and get under my rig between trail runs to check as much as I can.

 

Sounds like its not the box your best bet if you can't find it is to go to a shop and have find all the problems for you. Then either you can repair or have then do it. It would be more helpful if we had more info.