Steering Wheel Shimmy and Vibration under brakes / Worn front Disk Rotors / Replacing Rotors and Pads / Torquing Wheel nuts evenly
From around the 5000km mark, many new CRDs have exhibited steering wheel shimmy and vibration under brakes.
This is due to the uneven wear of the front rotors (sometimes incorrectly referred to as 'warping') and is due in part to the aggressive pad material of the factory pads on rotors that are made of relatively soft iron.
What aggrivates the uneven wear is the wheel nuts not being tightened (torqued) evenly. This sets up a slight warp in the rotor which means the rotors wear unevenly after a few thousand km of brake use, and then you start to experience the vibration.
Jeep Dealers are good at replacing rotors under warranty, just ask them! You can avoid this after you get your first replacement set installed by just making sure you get the front wheel nuts torqued evenly. A Torque wrench is ideal for this purpose. Torquing the nuts to approx 115-155nm is recommended in the service manual.
A better replacement rotor made of harder metal is available from RDA Brakes Australia - see web site for contact information of one of their dealers.
http://www.rdabrakes.com.au
They also sell EBC Greenstuff 4WD brake pads which are also a good alternative to the pads that come from the factory when its time to replace them.