Suspension:

As usual we have been busy doing things out of order, Tent and other roof top accessories installed prior to installing the new suspension. Driving Eeyore in his factor livery became an unnerving experience at best. In addition, it seemed that we were dragging his behind down the road, not a good look for a Jeep. We had originally thought about a 2” lift to keep the build drivable under all conditions.  The current handling and stance convinced us to seek out a 3” lift, question was which one.  We ended up with a short list of three systems: AEV, Clayton, or Tera Flex.  Watched a lot of reviews, probably the best apples to apples comparison was from Brad at Trail Recon.  We ultimately went with a 3” Tera Flex Outback kit with adjustable Alpine control arms.  A set of Falcon 3.3 adjustable shocks and steering stabilizer, Steer Smarts Yeti track bars rounded out the package. The instructions provided with the Tera Flex and Falcon goodies were super clear and easy to follow Installation of the entire kit was very straight forward even in a one car garage. The engineer in me took plenty of stock measurements and angles for front end, driveshafts, and diffs. Liberal use of lasers and measuring tools got everything lined up properly where it should be, and the alignment was withing specs.  We did decide to install SS extended brake lines, spring retainers and replace the tie rod ends with factory parts. With everything double checked and torqued to specs, we temporarily bolted the factory wheels and tires back on so we could complete the comparison measurements as our new ones had not yet arrived.  We fully expected to get 3” or a bit more of height gain due to 100k miles and some sag on the old parts, what we got was 5-1/2” of gain. A bit of investigation revealed that the previous owner had replaced the springs with shorter ones, probably from a sport. We can only assume that this was to make it easier to get in and out of combined with the running boards in place of sliders, who does that? Probably the only Rubicon in history to have a lowering kit. lol.  That also explains the poor handling and sagging rear end with the roof mods added.  The suspension works fantastically, the adjustable shocks were well worth the super expensive cost, not getting beat up all day on the highway or trail – priceless.  Two things we will change down the road.  Would like a touch higher spring rate for the rear due to the weight on extended trips, might consider a set of airbags, some more research needed here.  The second thing will be the steering, will be adding heavy duty ball joints, tie rods & ends and most likely a better steering box and brace.  Works ok now, but a weak link on the undercarriage.

Wheels and Tires: Tire selection can be a hot topic, everyone has their favorites, ours is BFG.  Have been running them on off road rigs for years. As this Jeep will be seeing some remote and difficult trails, we would like to run the KM3 mud terrain for its off-road performance.  However old age and a wee bit of common sense won the battle, and we went with the tried-and-true KO2 all-terrain. Since we love to explore all over and a lot of our trips are long distances, that means plenty of highway miles, with a good portion of them in winter conditions. The

KO2 offers a quiet ride, much longer tread life, and has the 3PMSF rating which many states will let you bypass chain up areas with 4-wheel drive. We opted for the heavy weight E rated tires for the extra plys in the sidewall and better stability on the road.  Airing down to 18psi works well for most off-road situations, down to around 10psi in soft sand.  For wheels we wanted something a bit different than mainstream. We ended up selecting Dirty Life Mesa wheels in matt black. The only issue we do not love about the wheels is that the valve stem hole is not recessed far enough for my liking. We wanted to keep the TPMS and found it very difficult to find shorty valve stems with TPMS sensors We finally found parts from two different manufactures that we could modify to work together, now we have a ¾” stem which works great and does not stick out waiting to get removed by a passing obstacle.

Gears and axles:

With larger tires and Eeyore playing the part of pack mule he had become somewhat lethargic in the performance department, not that he had an abundance of power to start with.  Unfortunately, Randy’s ring and pinion, our long-time favorite gear shop had closed. Finding a good gear shop was harder than we had thought. We have been doing business with Northridge 4X4 in Silverdale for a while but had not thought of having work done there. Turns out they have a capable shop and good pricing. We had planned on Yukon gears, but they convinced us to use gears from 10 factory with a 4:88 ratio, great quality and a much better warranty at no extra cost. While we were there, we had them replace all seals, wheel bearings at all four corners. We appreciate the work Northridge did, as it is one of only two things, we will not do ourselves on this project. The other will come later at the end of the project.