Frontera Steering Damper

First thing most peeps are going to say is What steering damper?  Frontera’s don’t have them and there is no specific kit available for the Frontera range.  So I did a bit of searching on the Internet and ended up ordering a universal kit from Llama 4×4.

So what came in the box?  It came with a Rough Country steering damper plus a selection of brackets to suit various applications

I ended up selecting the smallest bracket set and then painted the damper. 

Fitting was a easy, attach the smallest bracket to the steering arm as close to the steering box as possible and the axle bracket as far away from the steering box as possible.  The damper has 200mm of travel whereas the Frontera only requires 150mm so it is definitely long enough.

So what is it like to drive?

At first it was a little strange, steering wasn’t noticeably heavier but it didn’t self centre as nicely as it did without the damper.  This might have been to do with the newness as after a few days use it has improved.  Off road yes it has made a difference and it is staying on the vehicle.

Wheel Balancing

Having gone a little bonkas with some tyres was having a huge problem with wheel wobble.  This wasn’t your usual 55 mph type high frequency wobble you could drive through but would start at just over 30 mph and was almost as if it had a buckled wheel.  Having checked that the tyres had no bulges and the wheels were actually true I decided to give some balancing beads a try.  Having spoken to a few peeps who had used products such as DynaBeads I decided to give it a go.  A few guys had used plastic bb shot to great effect so ordered some up from eBay and popped 10 oz into each wheel.  It did make a slight improvement but the wobble was still there and bad enough to stop me driving the vehicle.

With the limited success from balancing beads I then decided to go down the traditional wheel balancing route, problem was finding somewhere with a balancing machine big enough for a set of 33" rubber.

In the meantime I removed the balancing beads from the tyres and also checked the tracking, this was toeing out by about 4mm where it should have been 0mm to 1mm toe in.  After getting the tracking sorted it was then off to get the wheels balanced, was a little surprised that with the balancing beads taken out and the tracking sorted it was actually better, than with the beads in, looks like the tracking was contributing to the huge wobble.  However with the decision made to go for traditional balance weights I went ahead and had all 4 wheels done.

The wheels ended up with quite a large amount of lead attached, 2 wheels as approx 250g, 1 had 600g and last 1 had 750g to get them balanced.

It is now sorted, wheel wobble has gone and it is a pleasure to drive again.  I am tempted to try balancing beads again now it looks like the tracking wasn’t helping.  This can wait until the current balancing weights get knocked off though although having gone for stick on weights they should stay on there for a while

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