Andy Shane
What’s going on guys? I’m Andy Shane and welcome back to JeepEquipment and welcome back to our article! Before We Look At The Stabilizers, Let’s Start All Aftermarket Solutions Let’s take a look at a factory facility. So everything under the steering is fully stocked right from the factory assembly line, a jeep wrangler steering stabilizer is attached to the axle of our steering linkage, it’s that little shock-absorbing thing right there and all it’s supposed to do is act as a steering damper – it takes some of those vibrations out when we do get a big pothole here it will somehow absorb that impact so it doesn’t get transferred to the steering wheel once we start other upgrades.
Sometimes it’s nice to improve our stabilizer. Well, everyone here has their different opinions online. Some people say that once a poor steering stabilizer loses its damping ability, it leads to death wobble, which is not exactly the case. You could walk with this at all, and it’s perfectly fine while it’s fine without walking. It’s not a really good idea and we’ll talk about that in a minute, but let’s check out some other stabilizers or steering settings. So the TJ or LJ has a very similar setup to the JKs and JLS and JTs, it’s a little backward although it starts here on the axle and goes all the way to our brake link.
We use the Teraflex 9550 stabilizer, it’s quite a budget stabilizer it’s like $ 60 but it’s an upgrade from the factory unit now on the JK as I drive 40 s1 tons and a bunch of other off-road upgrades is a stabilizer may not be the best choice and that’s why I went for hydraulics assist it looks a lot like a stabilizer it’s attached to the axle and over here on our rod or steering linkage since you can see it’s actually a hydraulic tappet acts, so this actually supports our steering, this tappet moves in and out via the power steering pump push our tires back and forth.
Let’s talk about some of the myths and the truth about steering stabilizers.
Myth Number One
A bad steering stabilizer causes death wobble and replacing it will fix your death wobble which is not true. While a steering stabilizer can remove some of the road feedback you are feeling steering wheel it won’t fix your death wobble. Death wobble is a cause of worn parts, so ball joints steering rails wishbone bushings or a mix of all that adding a steering stabilizer might somehow hide that wobble or wobble, but it definitely didn’t fix the problem which is very common, but luckily most Jeep owners have realized that by now and that’s kind of pushed aside. It’s not really a myth anymore, but there are a few people and a few companies that do one apply steering stabilizer as a complete solution.
Myth Number Two
Don’t even look for a stabilizer. On the internet, there are a lot of people who say they are a complete waste of money and you can bet on not having one from now on the problem with that is somehow the whole reason to forget about a stabilizer if we didn’t have it would the jeep still drive well that won’t stop us from wandering the road or drifting around what it will do is somehow improve the ride and make our steering setup almost a bit stronger, So like I mentioned earlier that bump right there takes a bit of the impact or the harshness of our steering linkages makes it a little stiffer before we can turn, so we turn our steering wheel, it comes down, the shaft rotates our box and moves our steering linkages now the problem is without a steering stabilizer that when we hit a curb it’s a really tough boom, what is it will happen?
Is all the influence that is carried directly into our steering gear via our drag link. The problem with this is that we can really damage our steering gear prematurely, they are pretty fragile or tear it off completely and what has happened to people in the past now, a stabilizer won’t exactly eliminate the potential problem, but it does offer a bit of vibration resistance or extra force against our hit just leave the steering in place as we drive down the road and you are less likely to wear out our ball and socket joints or main joints or other steering related components prematurely. So should you remove them completely? I don’t think so.
So if you don’t have a full custom setup or hydraulic assist and that brings me to
Myth Number Three
Does your Jeep need a steering stabilizer or the hydraulic assist in person? Hydraulic assist, what does it do? Is to take pressure off your steering gear and actually move a lot more pressure down here, it’s just pushing right in and out via this hydraulic ram, it helps spin those bigger, heavier tires, especially if they are and have airy off-road terrain lots of grips you can start to hear your power steering pump whine and scream when you try to turn these things and the hydraulic assist really takes it to another level making it a lot easier to turn and it’s much stronger for the Jeep.
Why don’t I switch to hydraulic assist? Why isn’t this thing going to see more time on the road ban? The hydraulic off-road assistance is amazing off-road and on the road, but it’s a very big upgrade. There are many parts to replace and a little more maintenance is required and it’s a pretty intrusive install so I think a nice stabilizer for this jeep kinda tightens the steering.
I’m a bit curious to see how it goes off-road. This thing is supposed to have some cool functions with the soft medium and hard. We’ll talk about that, but in the future, it will probably get hydraulic assistance, but at the moment I don’t do it I don’t think it’s necessary, especially since I don’t do that much off-road. Let’s go back to the garage.
One of the other myths.
The Fourth Myth
is that you don’t have to spend a lot of money on a fancy stabilizer some people do say a $ 60 or even just a factory unit works just as well as a nicer one like this one we’ll soon find out that I’ve never driven one of this and I’ve never driven an adjustable steering stabilizer so I’m curious to see how this one on the streets there it’s really nice and hard to turn it feels great but what that’s doing is creating more drag on your steering your power steering pump has to work harder to make turns so over time it might damage your power steering pump and while it feels nice on the road you’re just creating a ton of resistance to turning almost like adding 40s on a Jeep.
So do I recommend the dual stabilizer setups? No, and I think what will kind of mimic a dual stabilizer setup is a shock like this since it has three settings soft, medium, and firm. The firm is almost like adding another stabilizer. It might not go that far to that much resistance but it’s awesome that we can have the different settings.
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