[55willystruck]

I got the rig new off the lot in '05 and started building at the time for local areas I run the most. Left it stock for a bit and ran my normal stuff learning what and where needed improvements. I hunt and wheel Rimrock the most so I've modded accordingly for the terrain. There are a few trail descriptions here but they really don't do it justice.

http://www.nwjeepn.com/WAtrails.htm

Rimrock is not for the faint of heart and certainly not a beginner location. It's extremely steep and off-camber, very tight timber, lots of winching required, damage to be expected and a lot of nerve required. I've preferred to keep the rig low relatively speaking as it's so steep and off camber that a stable, low stance overall seems to do much better than taller rigs with massive tires. Massive tires are NOT needed here and typically do more damage than good both to the trails and the rig. Being so big causes rigs to roll easier and this is NOT a place you want to go over. I've stuck with my preferred tire size of 255/85/16 to this point which is roughly 33.5" tall new and around 10" wide. It has done very well for me thus far, but on an '05 LJ Rubicon-ground clearance leaves something to be desired.

Here is an early on shot with some initial mods. I think this is with OME suspension, ARB bulbar, Medic TT/engine skid, JKS BL and few other things:



A cage was of utmost importance so I got a welder and starting messing around with stuff. Ended up building my own cage addition off the factory setup. I forget exactly but think I added somewhere around 23 bars and 32 gussets total for the setup. I always wanted to get a real tube bender (I made one for this project that did OK but not great) then do a full custom cage but never have been able. This one works with all factory features and fits under the top nicely. I did compromise going through the dash as my wife would have killed me at the time on a brand new rig but thus far, it's been rolled twice and on it's side several times and is holding well. Here is a couple of that process:





A favorite spot for lunch just outside of town, additional armor added in the form of Jeeperman rear swing out with home built Co2 carrier and fuel carrier, full Rokmen strikers and sliders and various other gear added as well:



It became obvious over time as I added and modified the rig that it was getting painfully heavy and that excessive weight was hurting the rig in many ways. I'd gone through hell trying to eliminate the body roll and sway on the street, added a dual rate swayloc up front and a currie anti-rock in the rear, changed shocks a few times, different springs, etc. The rig did well off road but was never quite "right" despite all the cool parts thus far and new additions. I titled this the "bump and grind" affair because the heavier the rig got, the more and more I was "bumping and grinding" down the trail. Rimrock isn't a rock place, it's the side of a mountain but regardless-clearance still matters. No matter where I'm at or what I've done, I "bump and grind" over everything in the LJ with only 33s. Clearance became more and more important and it became rather clear that at this point the excessive weight was doing much more harm than good for the rig.

One of the first changes I made was swapping out the Kilby gas skid for the Savvy to save some weight. Till this point, aluminum wasn't really done for armor and Savvy introduced their new aluminum gas skid. I drank the kool-aide and loved it immediately so I made the swap. Here's a few pics:









My rig was so heavy at this point that simply that one gas skid swap and a loss of 30 lbs. there was noticeable immediately in handling of the rig. I knew I needed to make a drastic change so I went with a full armor swap and removed most all the steel armor from the rig. The process was done pretty quickly and the weight loss was huge. On paper, I had easily lost well over 550 lbs. which was about 10% of vehicle weight-huge savings. On the scales, it ended up being more than that but I forget off hand how much. Savvy was my choice for the swap mixed with a bit of Metalcloak as well. I'd rolled the rig a couple times by this point and been on it's side a lot so new fenders were required as well to make it look decent again. Here's an after armor swap after the big diet:



With the big armor change, and clearance being the goal, I also ditched my Medic TT/Engine skid and switched to savvy as well. Here are a couple comparisons:








More to come...

Best of Luck,

Mike

[55willystruck]

While this isn't necessarily in order, at some point along the way, the lack of clearance was an obvious problem. While on the Rubicon trail, I ended up mangling the factory body mounts and sheered the head off a couple bolts through the middle of the rig. I ended up building some high clearance mounts that have an inner shelf with LED lighting built in for rock lights and adequate water drainage at the frame so as to prevent rust in that location. Here's a couple pics of the mounts and difference between stock. Yes, these are only the front 4, the back 2 are shorter in length and don't stick out as far. I did them one at a time to retain somewhat level rig without altering position. I eliminated the BL pucks through the center mounts and raised these using only the factory rubber:





Through various changes, clearance was improving and with loss of weight, I'd actually gained ground clearance everywhere via adding back lost lift height due to sagging springs. You can see it's getting better but still not there.



I was still bumping and grinding everywhere and all my factory mounts were pretty well trashed under the rig. I'd wanted to do a "real" suspension build since the beginning but never had the know-how, or the balls to cut the rig up that far.

Then this happened:



My engine failed AGAIN. I had that E05 campaign issue in the beginning when new off the lot and a full rebuild of the engine with new cam, crank, rods, lifters, etc. at that time. Since that time, the rig has seen now 4 OPDGs and 3 cams. This last one I did myself to save money as I couldn't afford another dealer rebuild. I used a Comp cam, Mopar springs/lifters and various other parts to get back together again.

I figured as the rig was down and I had lost my job due to health issues, I had the time and I'd been studying a bit so I finally got the nerve to really start cutting into the rig and try to get the performance I had been after all along while at the same time, going further to increase ground clearance. I decided to cut the rig up and do my custom 3 link front and 4 link rear suspension...

One of the things I started with was Blaine's tie-rod flip. I had the kit for a LONG time, just finally got around to installing it:





With a good bit of clearance gained there at the front, I moved to the rear. Being relatively low on 33s, my LJ's fuel tank does probably the most "bumping" of anything. I hit that thing hard, and often. I figured since it was time to do the suspension, I may as well try to do it right and gain clearance everywhere-including the fuel tank. I have a little girl who loves riding in the rig so I needed to keep the rear seat and tub room. A fuel cell was out of the question, I had to relocate the factory tank as much as I could get away with. Here is how the factory stuff looked prior to my mods:





I cut out a good bit of the front crossmember, factory shock mounts, etc. and slowly worked across the double-walled crossmember pinching it together with clamps and slowly welding across the edge to build a new welded seam in the front. In the rear, I cut and removed about half of the rear most LJ tub support and bend/welded the rest back. This was the two areas for clearance I needed to tuck the tank even further.





I had been running the Savvy fuel skid for a while. I ended up cutting the upper row of mounts off and lowering another 1" full, fitting it all back together then tried to stuff it up in the new location. Here it is with the factory tank raised another 1" over the already elevated position:



I have since measured several factory Jeeps around town and am seeing varying dimensions from 7-7.5" below frame at the lowest point of the factory tank. With my mods, my "tighter tank tuck" hangs 3.5" below the frame so depending on the rig, I figure I'm anywhere from 3.5" to 4" tucked higher than factory position with mods complete. Yup, it's in there:



With the tank done, it was time to move to the actual suspension portion. Relocating the rear spring perch was necessary so I started with some measurements and some lines:



At the same time, I wanted to out board so I cut a hole:



More to come...

Best of Luck,

Mike

[55willystruck]

As I'm a poor broke bastid, I decided I'd cut costs a bit for this rebuild by building all my own brackets from scratch. This has been a huge PITA but it's working and has saved a ton of money in custom mounts. Here is a bit of out board tower work:



Pics are a bit deceiving but here is relocated uppers and new towers:



So with the towers in place and perch relocated, I could tell for the lowers there would be issue with the rear brake calipers. Something needed to be done there to allow enough distance for everything to clear. Thankfully Blaine has already developed a fancy kit to handle this by relocating the rear calipers to the front of the axle. In addition to the flip, I got to retain my original factory rear parking brake setup-cables and all. Here is the kit:



And installed:



So with that out of the way, it was time to move to the actual suspension again. I've been running and LOVING the currie joints for years now so I knew they had to stay in the new rebuild. This time I went a bit bigger though with the 2.5" 1.25" shank JJs in LH and RH threads for double adjustable arms while on the rig. This has proven to be a great decision thus far simply for ease of adjustment. Here you can see a few of the joints inside my PVC links used for mockup. This ended up being a bit more of a pain than it was worth, and ended up costing me more work cutting off lowers at the axle to remount everything:



I currently have a set of 4130 chromo temporary links in place which I've continued mock-up and finished the rear end with. When the new links arrive, they will be 4130 heat treated chromo, bungs TIGd then heat treated and oil quenched after welding. They are 1.75" .188 wall and set to 23" in length to allow me to run the arms anywhere from 27.5"-roughly 30.5" overall total length somewhere in that range.

Shocks was another issue and having had many sets thus far, I decided to spend a bit more this time around on a quality shock. I also wanted to make full use of the available travel in the rig so I went with Fox 2.0 12" travel Remote Reservoir shocks. Blaine had been working with Wayne from Alltech and have come out with what is rumored to be a pretty sweet custom valving for these shocks so almost immediately when my new shocks arrived, I sent them down to Blaine who had Wayne do the custom valving on them. I felt a bit bad as they returned to me within about a weeks time which meant Wayne spent his Saturday working on my custom valving rather than out wheeling or having fun. Thanks Wayne (and Blaine) for doing this!!! I can't Wait to finish this thing and go beat them on the trails, see how they do!!!



More to come...

Best of Luck,

Mike

[bmosing]

Very nice looking rig and props on all the work! Looking forward to more. How long after you got your welder did you build your cage? That is a pretty large undertaking and it looks like you did a really nice job

[55willystruck]

So at this point it was time to work on the actual geometry of the suspension. I've been reading for years now it seems, watching many builds and trying to learn how things work and why. While I'm not sure I can even begin to understand it at this point, I at least felt I had the balls now to start cutting. One of the things I did to help learn was look at the 4 link calc and plug in all my factory dimensions then play with numbers tweaking things a bit to see how things changed with each dimensional difference. What I found with my current 3" AEV/Nth springs, rancho shocks, currie arms with JJs throughout including front housing, front/rear anti-rocks, etc. was that using ALL factory mount locations, I had a whopping 172% anti-squat with a 12 degree positive roll over steer. I took many measurements of my frame and area to work with then put them into the calc. After finding what I thought would work and starting to build, I had to throw that all out as what looks good on paper may not really fit where you think. Plugging into the calc again, what I did end up with is now a respectable 72% AS with a slightly negative neutral roll axis. I'm hoping to notice a big seat of pants change in the rig with hill climbing especially and better stability.

So as I'm building all my own brackets which has proven to be a real PITA, I've got a little frustrated at times and forgot to take a lot of pics along the way of building bracketry. Regardless, if you look close, you can see the uppers hiding up in there some where. These ended up being the most difficult part as I tried a few different designs but was never happy with anything. I finally came at it from the outside in:





One of the things that came up using PVC for mockup is they don't fit the joints snug with the painters tape and PVC flexes easily and doesn't work for crap to cycle suspension. This is one of the areas I had trouble with after getting the new temporary links out of chromo. I had some significant clearance issues at the lower inside radius of the frame. I had two choices here-either cut up the mounts at the frame I'd worked so hard on over several different tries, or notch the frame. As I already had notched for the out board, I figured I'd stick with that theme and cut a notch. I removed the lower inside radius of the frame over about a 10" span then burned in some 3/16" plate inside the frame to retain full clearance gained for the arms at full bump. They're totally enclosed and sealed up with a couple plates of 3/16" and should work just fine for this purpose. If you look close, you can see the lowers are tucked inside the frame at full stuff:



While on the topic of being at full bump, pics are a bit deceiving but you can see how much clearance I have at full bump between the axle in the newly positioned location as far back as I could get it up against the gas skid and crossmember. I have no more than 1/8" here in a couple spots. Everything clears nicely during all cycling, but it's sure close!



So I needed a way to mount the upper links at the diff as I was eliminating my rear track bar. I built a link bridge over the housing fairly low to the diff which is also allowing me to run the factory hard brake lines in basically same position as factory using all the factory mount locations and hold downs for the hard line. Both my hard lines and my ARB line is fairly well protected this way and everything is tight to the housing. I also had an issue with peeling the factory diff cover and leaking fluid so I made a 1/4" diff ring that I welded to the factory cover then added a 1" upper support bracket to the link bridge which I then tied to the diff cover so the bridge and cover are bolted together up top for additional strength. No leaks at the cover now-at least not yet, and more strength up top for the mounts:



So here's a shot of the basic layout. My lowers come in board a bit on mini-crossmembers which are supported and gusseted as well as tied into the uppers welded in on the outside of the frame. Lowers come 1.5" below frame at lowest point and angle down roughly 5-6 degrees to lower axle. They angle out roughly 17 degrees from what I can tell, or close to it on each side. My uppers are angled in to the top of the diff roughly 28 degrees and are parallel to ground-level with 0 degrees angle on them at ride height. I have somewhere between 6-6.5" vertical separation at frame and between 8-8.5 at the diff. Kinda hard to tell exactly but right in there somewhere.









More to come...

Best of Luck,

Mike

[55willystruck]

So with my new shocks, I had a real brain fart and totally overlooked the hose for the reservoir when installing the towers. I ran the towers as full up tight into the tub as I could get them, and still had to clearance a bit with a sledge and piece of rod to dimple enough to adequately clear. I tried a bit more but didn't want to damage the tub or tear through so I ended up having to relocate the reservoirs to another location that would work instead. They just barely tucked in on the frame behind the axle tucked in under my rear anti-rock:





On the shocks I wanted to make optimum use of Wayne's custom tune so I worked very hard to maximize up travel as much as possible with my setup. I was targeting a 50/50 split with 6" up and 6" down out of the shock, on a 3" spring. After getting springs in and finalizing everything where it is now, I ended up with 7" up and 5" down. I am expecting springs to settle out a bit once it's on the road and during the "shake down" so I SHOULD be pretty dang close to my 50/50 6" up and 6" down once it settles a bit more:



Here is a shot from the rear back on the tires for the first time in a LONG time. I am sitting on AEV/Nth 3" progressive springs on worn 255/85/16 Toyo MTs. I currently have a bit over 20" at the fuel tank which should prove to be very beneficial on my "bump and grind" LJ here. My lower mounts had to be re-done due to issues with PVC and finding pinion angle and such and now hang a bit lower on the axle than I wanted but still higher than factory which is great. IF the springs don't settle out enough as much as I want, I will cut the lowers and move them up a bit and bump accordingly to retain the 6" up I want. For now, it's on wheels again which is a GREAT feeling!



And here is a side shot:



Overall this has been a HUGE learning process to say the least. Yes it's on wheels now but will go back on stands today or tomorrow as I need to now cut up the front for the 3 link. I have most of the axle mounts built already and shocks and chromo temp links are here with joints so I HOPE this goes a bit faster. We'll see. I REALLY hope this work pays off in the end, I've been without a driving Jeep since the engine failed back in December now. Driving hard to get it out and actually use it before summer is up.

More to come with 3 link progress, that's it for now...

Best of Luck,

Mike

[55willystruck]

Originally Posted by bmosing

Very nice looking rig and props on all the work! Looking forward to more. How long after you got your welder did you build your cage? That is a pretty large undertaking and it looks like you did a really nice job

Thank You!

The cage was indeed a huge undertaking. Most will cringe at this but I got the welder, built a couple post drivers for fencing at the ranch and a Co2 carrier for the bumper then started the cage. It took a couple months if I recall to do as I'd fit a tube at at time and go that way, then gussets. Did nearly all welding inside the rig then pulled it to finish weld what I couldn't reach, paint, then re-install. At that time, I'd fully intended to get a real tube bender and build a custom cage through the dash but this one has been rolled twice and on it's side several times and is holding well. I use it as a "slider" of sorts in the tight timber up here to run on two wheels then kick me back to all fours again depending on the trail I'm on. Because it's held so well, while I still plan to re-do it IF I ever get a real bender, it isn't very high on the list anymore. Maybe at some point down the road but for now, it's been working quite well.

Definitely was pretty worried though building this as my first real welding project! Not something for beginners to tackle and at several points, I thought I'd bit off more than I could chew...

Best of Luck,

Mike

[Imped]

FINALLY, you show off your work.

Awesome job so far Mike, always fun chatting with you.

[55willystruck]

Originally Posted by Imped

FINALLY, you show off your work.

Awesome job so far Mike, always fun chatting with you.

Would you believe me if I said "I'm shy"???

Thanks! Without you and Blaine's help along the way, I am still not sure I'd have had the nerve to try this. For my "first" I think it's coming along OK, lets just hope it works!

Best of Luck,

Mike

[Mallanaga]

very awesome... nice write up! the 4-link stuff is awesome.

[Mboelts]

Awesome build. Going to "steal" some of your idea. Great to see pics of a Silver LJ with the MetalCloak Highline fenders on the front. Now I know what mine will look like!!

[thirdeye]

Sick.

[geiman]

Glad you finally got this up, looks awesome! Makes me even more anxious to start on mine.

[srfnfly227]

Looking great Mike Can't wait to see the pics once everything is complete. Are you going to drive it for a bit before you start on the front end?

[55willystruck]

Originally Posted by srfnfly227

Looking great Mike Can't wait to see the pics once everything is complete. Are you going to drive it for a bit before you start on the front end?

Thanks guys!

srfnfly-

No, I'm afraid to. It has been down SO long now that I'm worried if I get in the driver seat, I won't get out till next winter. I gotta get this done NOW as quickly as possible.

Guys will be here shortly to do full heat pump replacement on the house. Ouch! :roll eyes:

But-that means once they arrive, I'm back in the shop to cut up the front...

Best of Luck,

Mike