PeterH
21st July 2016, 06:56 PM
Just thought I'd share my experiences on a P38 steering experience I've had over the last week.
I have been doing a few longer trips of late and noticed the steering tending to tramline, or want to follow grooves in the road, along with a bit of a knock developing.
Sometimes things wear slowly and you don't really notice until it starts to become obvious.
I had a look and could see the panhard rod bushes were looking a bit worse for wear, so I got some aftermarket ones and pressed those in last week.
The steering felt much tighter, but when I got over about 60 or 70 km/h, the dreaded death wobble reared it's ugly head. I've never experienced that before, but I knew what it was straight away.
From everything I've read, often panhard rod bushes fix this problem, but not in my case.
I found movement in the steering shaft coming from the top uni joint, so I replaced that, which improved the steering feel again, but the death wobble persisted at the same speed.
I tightend the steering box a smidge to try and tighten things up a bit, got the front wheels balanced, rotated the front wheels to the back, checked the shocks and steering damper, all to no avail, still the death wobble at the same speed.
I finally caved and took it to my local Land Rover specialist, who had a good look over the front end and found the lower ball joints needed replacing, along with a couple of tie rod ends that were on the way out.
But to my surprise, he found the panhard rod bushes had a lot of movement in them, even though they were new.
He showed me them on the bench and the rubber was just too soft to do the job properly, he thought that may have caused the front to bounce from side to side, setting off of the wobble.
He fitted genuine bushes which are much harder rubber, and I'm glad to report it is driving much better now and no sign of death wobble.
I'm off to get a wheel alignment tomorrow morning to make sure everything is ok.
So the moral of the story? Use genuine panhard rod bushes!
Cheers, Pete.
I have been doing a few longer trips of late and noticed the steering tending to tramline, or want to follow grooves in the road, along with a bit of a knock developing.
Sometimes things wear slowly and you don't really notice until it starts to become obvious.
I had a look and could see the panhard rod bushes were looking a bit worse for wear, so I got some aftermarket ones and pressed those in last week.
The steering felt much tighter, but when I got over about 60 or 70 km/h, the dreaded death wobble reared it's ugly head. I've never experienced that before, but I knew what it was straight away.
From everything I've read, often panhard rod bushes fix this problem, but not in my case.
I found movement in the steering shaft coming from the top uni joint, so I replaced that, which improved the steering feel again, but the death wobble persisted at the same speed.
I tightend the steering box a smidge to try and tighten things up a bit, got the front wheels balanced, rotated the front wheels to the back, checked the shocks and steering damper, all to no avail, still the death wobble at the same speed.
I finally caved and took it to my local Land Rover specialist, who had a good look over the front end and found the lower ball joints needed replacing, along with a couple of tie rod ends that were on the way out.
But to my surprise, he found the panhard rod bushes had a lot of movement in them, even though they were new.
He showed me them on the bench and the rubber was just too soft to do the job properly, he thought that may have caused the front to bounce from side to side, setting off of the wobble.
He fitted genuine bushes which are much harder rubber, and I'm glad to report it is driving much better now and no sign of death wobble.
I'm off to get a wheel alignment tomorrow morning to make sure everything is ok.
So the moral of the story? Use genuine panhard rod bushes!
Cheers, Pete.