I was recently scored a set of Trail-Gear trunnion bearing eliminators from a local guy hard on his luck.
$150, couldn't pass it up:
Over the weekend I replaced my 4 tie rod ends, test drive showed everything was good to go.
I headed out monday morning to head out to the forest to run some trails with some friends over the Memorial Day holiday.
about 2 miles from the meet up location i had a really bad shimmy. Pulled over and checked things out, everything looked fine, tightened the lug nuts, no issue there. Tried again, at 35 it was bad so headed the 40 miles home never being able to get above 30 mph
So I got to thinking i could have blown a trunnion bearing on my last run and might as well start the replacement process.
I did find some play in the bearings, but nothing that would account for the sudden onset of death wobble.
I had the front end rebuilt 6 years ago by a friend who needed some cash, he didn't mention that the driver side knuckle ball looked like birfield had exploded.
Passenger side looked pretty good
inner axle seals were is relatively good shape
it was also good to see that the Trail-gear Dirty 30 axles were still looking good after 6 years and several thousand miles.
so no smoking gun but I am going to replace the wheel bearings too, swap out the steering shaft and button it up hopefully over the weekend.