Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Garghhhh
I am about at wits end with the vibration in my GQ. Various suspension places have replaced bits, checked alignment, replaced bushes, told me my springs are sagged one side, balanced and rotated wheels, informed me that my 8" rims are too wide and that I should have the upper shims removed to tighten up the swivel bearings.

Thus far, all they managed is to increase the speed the vibration starts and stops at... It now vibrates between 90 and 100 and dissappears at around 105. All thats left is to drop back to 7" rims and remove the upper shims...

Anyone experienced the problem of 8" rims causing a vibration or is this smoke and mirrors from people who cant fix the problem ? Secondly ...I was quoted around 7-800 bucks to replace whatever was nessesary on the swivel hubs and remove the upper shims. Looking at the manual this (the upper shims) doesn't appear to be a difficult job.

Any and all constructive ideas gratefully accepted !!

Daniel

You must try some wheels off a mates Nissan that doesnt shake.

Bazzle

bazzle wrote:You must try some wheels off a mates Nissan that doesnt shake. Bazzle

Thats a bloody good idea .. Anyone in Townsville able to help me out ?

8" wide rims aint the problem in genral (yours might be bent though). As any body on this list with over 33" high tyres will have 8" wide rims.
I have a vibe in mine (not 100% sure where it is as I havnt driven it for a month), but it diasppread when I unlocked the hubs so I reckon something in the front shaft has gone.

taking a shim out of the knuckle bearingas for more preload is a good idea. but you have to remove an equal amount from the upper and lower bearings. it is a bit of a fiddly job to do it right and check preloads and so forth, but $800 is a bit of a scam.
to do it right it will probably take you 2 or 3 hours. a gregorys manual will explain it for you.

The genuine nissan swival bearings over here are $175 each,times that by 4 and $800 doesn't sound so bad.I bought some from a bearing company for $30 each,same make etc.
You should not have to remove shims unless the bearing are worn,in which case they need replacing anyway.
The same price variances occur with the inner axle seals etc.
J Top

try drop brackets??

What sort of lift are we talkin about here?

TOM

GQ wrote:try drop brackets?? What sort of lift are we talkin about here? TOM

No real discernable lift at all .... I feel it may have had a taller set of coils at one stage though. Fulcrum claim caster angle is close enough to 0 degrees.

Daniel

Check your leading arm bushes. Cost me $210 to replace them with genuine which is the only way to go when changing bushes.

Will do !
toughnut has kindly offered a set or wheels and some help in the near future to help sort this bitch out

Strangely enough, I had a mechanic mate drive it for the hell of it to gain his thoughts.First comment at hitting 100 was "wheels", He feels that a car with raped bushes tends to wander and tramline quite a bit which this doesnt so. He reckons he could feel it start at 70 in the wheels and by 100 it was well and truly in the body.

Looking forward to catching up with toughnut I can tell you

my old man had a vibration problem exactly what u are talking about when he bought his gq long wheel base new in 1990.. tried everything and didnt solve the problem until he ditched the factory tyres and fitted alloys and new rubber.. dunno if this helps but i would definately be starting by looking at a set of different rims tyres to start diagnosing with.,..

Try an on Vehicle wheel ballance from one of the truck joints but remember to put the rims back on the same stud patern if you ever take them off. this might fix your problem.

Bastards fixed
Toughnut kindly lent me some 16" wheels which seemed to fix the problem and suggested I whip over to a local tyre place to see a bloke cluey on Patrols. Ten minutes later and 2 kingpin bushes short I drove out, ran her all the way up to 120 odd without a hint of shake

A big public thanks to toughnut for being so trusting with a set of 16" wheels and tyres for testing! Bloody champion that a bloke I didn't know from a bar of soap would let me drive away with 4 of his wheels

Daniel

Hey Daniel glad to here you got it sorted and Steve was good enough to come to the party. He's a top bloke.

Steve was a bloody champion
He never named his poison though so I still owe him a bottle / slab

Mate Steve is on the Patrol Forum alot and goes by the username "Spider". He normally logs on later in the night (about now actually. )

Good to see it was an easy fix Daniel. Just in time for the young fella to get his brand new licence and run over a few things to test the suspension . Don't worry about the poison I'm sure I'll need a hand with something in the future...

By the way the blokes name is Adrian and he is one of two owners of Kirwan Tyres here in Townsville. Very cluey bloke when it comes to 4wd's in general but especially Patrols. top bloke.

A mate has a GQ with the same shake problem, and over 75km/h the thing gets a real bounce up ang becomes uncontrolable. he has relaced bushes, etc and really leves dropped arms as the only other alternitave that I know of although we will try my tyres on in the next few weaks as mine does not shake (love the wizzard)

any sugestions, have I missed something??

Tiny

Yeah. Have a look at the shims on the king pin. Thats all slug did. He removed a couple of shims and the problem was gooooonnnneee

Yeah, that has allready been done mate. Some one told me it could be a slight twist in the chassis?? could this be right??? the thing got bought from an elderly couple who never used it offroad, and apparently had no acco's, and the body would appear not to have either.

Will try the tyres soon, but still from my understanding we will need to look at radius arms


Tiny

Yeah can be damb frustrating sometimes.

The patrol is very sencitive to wheel balance to thay must be balanced on the car
I've had this problem on two patrol's one with a 6" lift and one stocker in hight i had to get the wheels balamced by a truck place

gaz

i find tyre pressure is the most important. i run 22 front 18 back on the street with 35's if i go to say 30 all round i used to get the wiggles. remember that the tyre has a much bigger surface area so withought bouncing needs reduced psi to support the weight . eg my 39's have about 13 at the moment and only just bag. also i had tried everything else to fix mine first before i found this out (as well as dripping panhard due to lift

cheers bru

Yeah, he is running 33s, and have tried different pressures to no avail.
Tiny

look at play in: pwr steer unit, panhard, radius arms, wheel bearings. set swivel hubs to 15lbs (i measured mine with a spring guage through the tierod hole. check rims (swap), set toe in to toe out (from memory) as the settings are different from std to wide wheel model.

my experience says that a little of everything is often the culprit, alothough i havent worked on anything under a 5" lift

cheers bru