Bigwalton's LJ - Formerly "The LJ gets some big tire love"

[bigwalton]

Here is one........
http://www.4wd.com/images/catalog/products/large/SUP/PDF/781072K.pdf

Looks like I owe you a beer, that looks to be it. Printing now, will check when I go back out.

No worries. Kate will have it done by the time you get back in town. She'll probably even have it decorated with Christmas lights too.

It is "her" Jeep after all

So where is the garage web cam so we can watch the agony of defeat and thrill of victory as you struggle late into the nights?

I'd do it if I knew how to make it public. Only thing I could do that I know how to do is to have a 1 on 1 video chat on iChat, GoogleTalk, etc.

We are men and don't need instructions!
We have torches,welders and cut off wheels!
Grunt grunt

Exactly, I made it work from the ones I found to get everything disassembled (not that it's very difficult to figure out the front end on an LJ.

Update.

Front end completely disassembled as far as it needs to go. Everything was simple and only the passenger side upper nut on the shock mounting stud was a problem, even after three soaks over two days with PB Blaster. Fought it for a bit with a pair of channel locks and wrench and managed to get it up enough for the............... wait for it..................... where's JC at?...................Sawzall! So that ended that struggle in about 20 seconds.

Current status pic (crappy crapberry pic, better ones later):

One other thing that may make the fact that they didn't send the other set of adjustable lower arms a moot issue. Even though the sales guy I was talking to KNEW that I was getting a 3" lift, he asked me about the adjustable lower arms, which seemed like a great idea to tweak the caster/pinon angle. So I went ahead and got them.

I only got fronts and when I was looking at the instructions, it specifically says in bold print that you have to have at least a 4" lift installed to add these adjustable arms.

My only thought is that it's a difference between the LJ/TJ (need to go check if it mentions just TJs or both on instructions, didn't check).

Anyway, they're not required for this 3" lift, so I'm just leaving the stock arms in place for now and I'll sort that out later.

Anyway, just came in to grab some leftovers (Kate and Laura went out to dinner because they knew I'd be in the garage all night ) and to post the update, back at it!

 

[bigwalton]

Dont forget that theirs always left over nuts and bolts when your done!!! Good luck!

Especially when I'm the one putting things together!!!!

 

[bigwalton]

Front is together with one exception, the kit has pretty cool straps to use to hold up the front swaybar when disconnected and they are supposed to mount in existing holes in the fender. There are no open holes that would work for these things. I would have drilled a hole, but I was worried about placement and having it in the right spot to allow enough, but not too much, slack.

The other issue I ran into was the lower bolts/sleeves/bushings for the swaybar discos. The instructions (the discos came with their own instructions) show two piece bushings in each end of the disco, mine have one piece bushings everywhere. Then, there's a larger and smaller bolt for each side, the small bolt goes at the top and the large one at the bottom and there's supposed to be two sizes of sleeve to go in the bushing. All my sleeves are the same and only fit the smaller bolt.

I just grabbed replacement smaller bolts and used them on one side and left out the larger ones. Everything goes together the same way, just a smaller bolt. I'll get them to send replacement hardware and install it later.

Other than having to fight the passenger coil spring with a crowbar to get it to get into the lower spring cup, everything went fine.

I have to adjust the length of the adj. trackbar to center the axle, but I want to move it around to let things settle in first after I do the rear. Nothing's rubbing anywhere with the puny stock tires on there.

More pics later, too tired to deal with the real camera. Three hours sleep each of the last two nights is catching up with me... I was thinking all-nighter

 

[cchambers]

Your not having any fun are ya? :d
glad to read the build and see how to do a build.
Gives a guy motovation this weekend.

 

[bigwalton]

Orionn from the forum is on his way over to help on the rear end. Looked up enough comments from other LJ owners that I'm not going to do the engine lift or tcase lowering kit from the lift. So just the rear install today and a driveway alignment before testing it out.

Not doing the wheel spacers until it's ready to go to the shop.

Hopefully the body lift gets here this week.

Back at it.

 

[bigwalton]

Test drive!!!!

HUGE thanks to Mark/Orionn for coming over to help, it would have been well into next week without him I think

 

[bigwalton]

Made it through a bunuch of dirt backroads with washboards and potholes to the pizza place and back on paved roads. Varied speed from 20 to 50 and eveything seemed to work fine. A little more body roll than before but nothing troubling. Corners well, no apparent driveshaft vibes.

I really like the stance with the extra height. The tires definitely look small, but not as bad as I'd expected.

More to come tomorrow with pics.

Still need to do the toe in, shorten the front trackbar, swap the lower bolts on the front swaybar discos and straighten the steering wheel. Then drive a little more on it and recheck all the torques.

 

[1x1_Speed_Craig]

Congrats on the progress, Eric. I will say, it drives me nuts when instructions suck or are missing.

Craig

 

[cchambers]

I know the jeep has the wrong tires on but need pic of the project!!!!!!!

 

[bigwalton]

I know the jeep has the wrong tires on but need pic of the project!!!!!!!

You're right, I'm trying to keep the wife/daughter from feeling completely neglected this weekend so I didn't have time last night or yet this morning to download pics off the camera (there's a bunch )

About to take Kate and Laura for a ride to get coffee/smoothie

Here's yet another crappy photo off my pukeberry:

 

[cchambers]

Looking good. What size tire are you going with again?

 

[bigwalton]

315/75 on the stock rims (wife's requirement )

I have wheel spacers that I'll put on to correct the backspacing to make the tires work. Not bothering with them until I'm headed to get the tires next weekend.

 

[bigwalton]

Ok, let's get this on....

Here's what I started with, our '05 LJ Rubicon. The only things I've done to it to this point are to swap on a Skid Row Nightcrawler bumper center section to mount the Ramsey winch that came off our old XJ before we sold it, added a Cobra CB and I just recently installed a PSC steering box skid (paid in most part by a gift certificate won for my calendar picture of the postal, so it's got a Scrambler connection now!).

The boxes are the 3" Black Diamond LJ lift

Here's the starting heights. I didn't do too great a job of getting the camera level (I guess because it was sooooo low!)

Front bumper:

Side at back of front flare:

Side at front of rear flare:

Center of rear bumper:

 

[cchambers]

Ok you must be sleep deprived. Its the same pic in the post.:zzz:

 

[bigwalton]

Here's the lift kit contents. The lift kit did not come with instructions and Black Diamond doesn't post theirs online (the one found and linked in an earlier post must be for an old version of the lift, it didn't match up part numbers or equipment)

So I made do with a set of instructions for a 4" TJ Superlift kit. All of the parts matched up, there's just no new lower arms in the 3" kit.

I ordered adjustable lower arms front and rear to have the ability to fine-tune pinon/caster angles, but they only sent front arms and in the intructions (they had instructions) it mentioned to only use the arms if you have a 4" or larger lift! For now I've left them out and will call BD/Superlift to see what's going on. The sales guy at BD knew I was getting a 3" kit, so I'm really confused. They owe me rear arms or a refund anyway...

You can also see the adjustable front and rear trackbar, but again, the rear one said not to use it with less than a 4" lift and indeed, we couldn't get the length short enough to match up to the stock trackbar. Since the rear has a bracket to correct the geometry, the instructions for the 4" kit reuse the stock bar anyway, so that's what we did. Another reason to call BD.

It just occurred to me that I could have put the adjustable bar together and not used the correction bracket, that would have probably let the longer adjustable bar work Why didn't I think of that!!! DOH!

The parts that did get used: springs, shocks, swaybar disconnects (pretty dang cool), swaybar retaining straps (when disconnected to hold up), extended bumpstops, rear upper control arm cam bolts (evil bastards!!!), new rear swaybar links, rear trackbar relocation bracket, parts bags (I was also missing a hardware bag for attaching the rear trackbar relocation bracket).

Parts shown that did not get used: motor mount lift, tcase lowering kit (not needed on LJs! )

Adjustable trackbars and front lower arms. Only used the front bar.

The springs really make you feel like you're boosting it. That's a lot of coil when you're mainly used to leaf springs.

The plates on the left are the motor mount lift and the bag on the lower right is the tcase drop, neither of which were used.

 

[cchambers]

COOL

 

[bigwalton]

Measured the angle on the rear driveshaft. The idea is to get this as close as possible after the lift install using the cam bolts you add on the axle end of the upper rear control arms. Without using the tcase lowering/motor mount kits, you can't get it to match, but the difference isn't enough to be problematic. So in the end you just use the cam bolts to make the angle as low as possible and call it good.

This was my one stroke of genius Well, it's not really genius but it wasn't called out in the instructions for the adjustable trackbar and it's DEAD simple compared to what they want you to do, so I'm calling it genius. I made a mark on the frame right over the axle and used a plumb bob held there to make a line on the axle housing that's perpendicular to the axle that I could use after the install to check the position of the axle at ride height to check that the trackbar length was correct. They want you to measure off the frame to the back side of the tire which just seems too iffy to me. WHEN the trackbar length needs adjusted, rather than trying to figure it from the iffy tire/frame measurement you redo this and simply measure exactly what needs to happens, do that and you're done.

Hard to get a shot of the line...

The instructions had you pulling the trackbar before the swaybar links and it is MUCH easier to do it the other way around so you can get on the frame end trackbar nut.

It's a tapered fit like a ball joint and without a pickle fork, I had to BFH it out. Trick with doing that without screwing up the threads on the bolt (even though I wasn't going to reuse the trackbar) is to leave the nut on it and above the end of the threads to give you something to safely hit. Popped out with a couple shots from the small sledge.

Comparison of stock trackbar to the adjustable unit. Tried to guess a length on it for the install.

 

[cchambers]

Need more! :d

 

[bigwalton]

The rest of the removals went fine with one small hangup.

I was trying to get everything off cleanly to sell off the stock Rubi stuff, but the nut on the shock stud decided to freeze solid halfway off even after three hosedowns over two days with PB Blaster. For the record, I HATE 3/4 of the shock mounting methods used on these things.

Out came this beastie and it was off in 20 seconds or so

Everything is out:

There's an immense amount of slack in the stock brake lines on this thing. This is full droop (lower arms hit the top of the brackets, so this is as low as things go and there's still slack.

Threw some paint on some of the bits that I could get to while things were out.

 

[cchambers]

YES POWER TOOLS!!!!!!!!!