First time buyer. Concerned about death wobble. Need advice.

Was that a bit of a "wobble" or the dangerous and uncontrollable "tries-to-throw-you-off-the-road " kind of wobble?

...Only I'm under the impression that any wobble is being called DW

For me, is was a lot more than a wheel out of balance! Really bad shake at around 40mph, and I would not go over 50. Putting my off road tyres on made it worse.

From what I understand of this phenomenon, at least on the standard set-up cars, king pin bearings and panhard rod bushes seem to be the fix

ILIV wrote: how do you reliably verify if a Jimny suffers from the DW? From what I have read, in some cases it goes away and reappears. That is, it is not consistent.

Some vehicles suffer a wobble that can be caused by a number of different problems. If you want to see if it has a 'Death Wobble' then drive it on an uneven road at around 50MPH - if it shakes so badly it feels like its going to fall apart and you can't see where you're going then it has a DW. You'll see more references to it on sites like this one because heavier wheels and tyres and lifted suspension make everything a bit less stable. In my case a mildly annoying wobble turned into a DW when I fitted aftermarket front Panhard rod bushes.

Max Headroom wrote: Was that a bit of a "wobble" or the dangerous and uncontrollable "tries-to-throw-you-off-the-road " kind of wobble?
...Only I'm under the impression that any wobble is being called DW

Exactly.

As said above all wobble is being incorrectly called "Death Wobble". But it is a fact that the Jimny has a "resonance" at about 45 mph at which point a steering shake can manifest itself (avoiding the term wobble). Depending upon the condition of the collective steering components AND any changes from standard this resonance can vary from nothing to "Death Wobble". For future clarity can I suggest a new measurement unit, the JDW (Jimny Death wobble). The scale will be 0 to 10 for steering shake and 11 for a Spinal shaking death wobble. :laugh: :laugh:

My Jimny had a JDW of 3, but a steering damper has masked this feature. See how this helps to give a "feel" of the problem.:silly:

Hang onto the wheel people.