blistovmhz
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Vancouver, BC
So my 98xj's previous owner was an idiot. He installed a Rubicon Express 4.5" short arm kit (presumably very drunk) and forgot to tighten anything, thus everything wore out by the time I bought it. I didn't have garage space to fix everything and I'd decided to just leave it until one of the many issues caused a failure, forcing me to rebuild/upgrade. Well, the trac-bar bushing wore out and I installed a new set, but the mount holes were lobed bad and then the shock mounts all failed simultaneously so I decided to give everything a closer look. Found pretty much everything was worn to the point that it was going to cost me near a grand to repair, and my history with RE is not good (shit support since they got bought out). I took this as an opportunity to look at other kits.
Looked at a few different options and ultimately went with the Rough Country 6.5" long arm kit (full) for $1400 or so. I know other options may have been a better idea, but RC's warranty is stellar and I've dealt with their support in the past and they've never driven me to homocide/seppuku, so here we are. Ordered my new kit, it shipped and arrived within' 4 days, and I installed it on the gravel in my alley with some really sketchy stands.
Installation:
Installation was nowhere near as smooth as I'd expected, but most of this was due to the previous owners idiocy. Every bolt took 20x longer to remove than it should have. Aside from tearing apart my Jeep, the kit itself had a few issues.
First and most annoying was the new cross member. The bolt holes are drilled with ****ing machine precision to fit the supplied bolts. This would be fantastic if I was installing on a brand new Jeep where the Unibody was still in perfect shape. As it is though, 15 years of abuse has twisted the frame slightly, which made aligning the holes impossible. I could get one or two bolts in, but the rest were out between 0.5 and 2mm. To compound this issue, the new crossmember uses the two bolt holes forward of the stock crossmember, that were never used for anything. They are of course, completely rusted out and I'll bet that's the same deal on every existing XJ that's left the showroom. It would've been easier to drill and access hole forward of the crossmember, and use a flag nut instead. My stock frame nuts were both rusted out and one stripped, so I'll have to either do as I proposed above, or weld the CM to the frame.
That aside, there was still no way to perfectly align the holes in the CM to the Jeep, so I had to enlarge 3 of the 6 holes on the CM by 1/32. Not a biggy I suppose.
Next, and I can't complain too much about this, but I wanted to mention it as perhaps RC's changed their kits... But there was extra hardware. They say specifically to reuse the stock LCA axle bolts, but there are definitely two new ones included. I couldn't figure out what grade they were so didn't use them, but I'll call RC to find out cause I really need them.
Otherwise, all the installation issues I've heard from others, didn't affect me. Lots of stories about hardware missing, brake lines not being long enough, parts that should be in the kit but aren't (or are optional when they're necessary). I certainly didn't have missing hardware, the brake lines are almost too long (my old lines were long enough so I haven't installed the new ones, but old ones are 4" shorter and still more than long enough), and everything I'd expect to come with the kit arrived.
Installation took about 18 hours over 3 days. Had my Jeep already been apart and the CM had fit properly, I'm sure it could have been done in 5 hours (with air tools).
Alignment:
No idea yet. The instructions tell you how long to set your control arms, but I'm sure they must be off a little bit as my caster is a bit under now, and steering isn't returning fast at half turn, and not at all at full turn. I'm sure this is a simple matter of extending the uppers 1/16 to 1/8. Everything else aligned nicely. I hear a lot of guys saying the specs result in having to put a lot of force into the axle to get the uppers to line up together, but "you're doing it wrong". If you have to twist the axle to get the uppers on, you've done something wrong and you're destroying your bushings with that preload. Adjust one to suit your camber, and adjust the other so it fits without any preload.
Toe in stayed deadly, which I suppose is to be expected. The new trac-bar installation was easy as I just set the Jeep on mostly level ground and the long arms and the new springs pretty much centered the body just fine without any intervention on my part.
Road test:
On road:
On road performance is, thus far, a little squishy. It's definitely much smoother than my 4.5" short arm as the short arms were sitting near 45 degrees, which translates into 50% of road energy being transmitted into the springs, while the other 50% goes directly into the frame. This is bad. The new long arms sit about 8 degress from parallel, which translates into about 90% spring and 10% frame. Much better.
But, it's definitely squishy. The 6.5" coils were not 2" longer than my 4.5" coils. They were nearly 4" longer. This means a much higher spring rate in the coils, which results in the Jeep wanting to flex everywhere. Steering is tight but feels somewhat dream like. Think about how driving a cloud would feel. This is a close approximation.
That said, it did handle not too bad on road. With my 4.5", I could drive down the highway carefully, with my swaybar disconnected. With the LA kit, not a chance. It was terrifying enough driving around the block without swaybar.
Off Road:
And here's where it matters. My old lift performed quite well despite it's age and poor installation. I'd tuned it as best I could and it outperformed a lot of other XJ's with other short arm kits by a large margin. My tires are almost bald but I was able to climb stuff on the first try, that other XJ's were taking 3 or 4 runs at. With the new LA kit, there's just no comparison. My buddy spent almost 5 minutes trying to climb a burm out of the river. When he finally got over, I threw the XJ in 4L and first, and let it just crawl at idle over the burm. No tire spin at all, just a nice slow crawl.
The articulation of this kit is impressive as all hell (especially for the price). The first real flex test here:
While this isn't a crazy flex or anything, I posted it to give reference. The above wasn't even a consideration for the kit. I left it in 4L and it crawled up without any help from me, and did so with no engine strain. It felt like my driver front just lifted itself up pre-emptively to stand on the rock. The real test of course is body roll on a flex, so here's that:
So how much body roll is this? No. Just no. Didn't even feel the climb. I was actually real surprised when I stopped and opened the door, because I didn't think I was that high off the ground.
Long short for the OR test, I've never seen or heard of a kit that will perform this well for the dollar. Off road, I'd pit this kit against almost anything else for twice the price.
Summation:
I've heard a lot of horror stories about the kit being incomplete, about brake lines being too short, about bushings wearing out immediately, and the flex joints eating themselves in under 500km. My experience thus far has been different and I suspect I know why people have had issues with the flex joints and bushings.
The kit was complete, brake lines are almost too long, the rear leaves seem a little small, but I've got at least 600lbs of tools in the back so maybe that's normal, and I'm pretty sure there were two issues with bushings/flex joints.
First, RC did acknowledge an issue with a few runs of their bushings and flex joints due to a bad poly mix. They claim to have fixed this. Everyone I've found who was affected, was given new bushings and flex joints without any hassle.
Second, I strongly suspect people are just preloading their bushings a bunch. Nearly every thread were someone's complained about bushing/flexjoint wear, they also describe issues aligning the upper control arms and using a comealong to force it into place. BAAAD idea. Perhaps the instructions are a bit off on the lengths. I just adjusted my drivers upper out by 2 turns and it the bolt just fell into the hole without any force required. I was originally worried about the joints, but after installing and realising what everyone else was doing wrong, I'm not so worried. The flex joints are enormous. Hell, the whole kit seems a bit heavier duty than is necessary for 3400lbs of Jeep. I guess I'll see in a few months if everything holds up.
I will say this. The supplied 2.2 shocks don't feel as good as my old RE remotes, or even my shitty Zone Offroad fronts. Jeep definitely feels a bit bouncier than I'd like, but at the same time it's a very soft bounce (not like a newer pickup where you hit the roof every time you run over a squirrel). One of my fellow wheelers girlfriends was getting sick in his truck from all the bounce. She hopped into mine and I drove over a rock garden/river (average rock is about 10" diameter) at about 40km/h and she said it felt much better than her BF's truck at 5km/h.
All in all, RC should seriously reconsider their CM bolt holes, provide better instructions, and possible do something about their shocks. For the price though, I can't imagine being upset. I'll probably write my own installation instructions and forward them to RC and hopefully they'll either fix the CM bolt holes and figure out the drivers upper length cause it's clearly not correct.
*edit* I forgot to mention that the CM install was even more of a biatch because the transmission mount was about 1/4" to the right of the holes on the CM. RC support told me this was both annoying and expected, and to install the CM first, then drop the transmission down into it while putting some lateral pressure on the transmission. This worked, but I think it may be putting a little strain on my engine mounts. Not a biggy as I've got bombproof mounts that'll probably outlive humanity. Just a consideration RC might want to make.
Looked at a few different options and ultimately went with the Rough Country 6.5" long arm kit (full) for $1400 or so. I know other options may have been a better idea, but RC's warranty is stellar and I've dealt with their support in the past and they've never driven me to homocide/seppuku, so here we are. Ordered my new kit, it shipped and arrived within' 4 days, and I installed it on the gravel in my alley with some really sketchy stands.
Installation:
Installation was nowhere near as smooth as I'd expected, but most of this was due to the previous owners idiocy. Every bolt took 20x longer to remove than it should have. Aside from tearing apart my Jeep, the kit itself had a few issues.
First and most annoying was the new cross member. The bolt holes are drilled with ****ing machine precision to fit the supplied bolts. This would be fantastic if I was installing on a brand new Jeep where the Unibody was still in perfect shape. As it is though, 15 years of abuse has twisted the frame slightly, which made aligning the holes impossible. I could get one or two bolts in, but the rest were out between 0.5 and 2mm. To compound this issue, the new crossmember uses the two bolt holes forward of the stock crossmember, that were never used for anything. They are of course, completely rusted out and I'll bet that's the same deal on every existing XJ that's left the showroom. It would've been easier to drill and access hole forward of the crossmember, and use a flag nut instead. My stock frame nuts were both rusted out and one stripped, so I'll have to either do as I proposed above, or weld the CM to the frame.
That aside, there was still no way to perfectly align the holes in the CM to the Jeep, so I had to enlarge 3 of the 6 holes on the CM by 1/32. Not a biggy I suppose.
Next, and I can't complain too much about this, but I wanted to mention it as perhaps RC's changed their kits... But there was extra hardware. They say specifically to reuse the stock LCA axle bolts, but there are definitely two new ones included. I couldn't figure out what grade they were so didn't use them, but I'll call RC to find out cause I really need them.
Otherwise, all the installation issues I've heard from others, didn't affect me. Lots of stories about hardware missing, brake lines not being long enough, parts that should be in the kit but aren't (or are optional when they're necessary). I certainly didn't have missing hardware, the brake lines are almost too long (my old lines were long enough so I haven't installed the new ones, but old ones are 4" shorter and still more than long enough), and everything I'd expect to come with the kit arrived.
Installation took about 18 hours over 3 days. Had my Jeep already been apart and the CM had fit properly, I'm sure it could have been done in 5 hours (with air tools).
Alignment:
No idea yet. The instructions tell you how long to set your control arms, but I'm sure they must be off a little bit as my caster is a bit under now, and steering isn't returning fast at half turn, and not at all at full turn. I'm sure this is a simple matter of extending the uppers 1/16 to 1/8. Everything else aligned nicely. I hear a lot of guys saying the specs result in having to put a lot of force into the axle to get the uppers to line up together, but "you're doing it wrong". If you have to twist the axle to get the uppers on, you've done something wrong and you're destroying your bushings with that preload. Adjust one to suit your camber, and adjust the other so it fits without any preload.
Toe in stayed deadly, which I suppose is to be expected. The new trac-bar installation was easy as I just set the Jeep on mostly level ground and the long arms and the new springs pretty much centered the body just fine without any intervention on my part.
Road test:
On road:
On road performance is, thus far, a little squishy. It's definitely much smoother than my 4.5" short arm as the short arms were sitting near 45 degrees, which translates into 50% of road energy being transmitted into the springs, while the other 50% goes directly into the frame. This is bad. The new long arms sit about 8 degress from parallel, which translates into about 90% spring and 10% frame. Much better.
But, it's definitely squishy. The 6.5" coils were not 2" longer than my 4.5" coils. They were nearly 4" longer. This means a much higher spring rate in the coils, which results in the Jeep wanting to flex everywhere. Steering is tight but feels somewhat dream like. Think about how driving a cloud would feel. This is a close approximation.
That said, it did handle not too bad on road. With my 4.5", I could drive down the highway carefully, with my swaybar disconnected. With the LA kit, not a chance. It was terrifying enough driving around the block without swaybar.
Off Road:
And here's where it matters. My old lift performed quite well despite it's age and poor installation. I'd tuned it as best I could and it outperformed a lot of other XJ's with other short arm kits by a large margin. My tires are almost bald but I was able to climb stuff on the first try, that other XJ's were taking 3 or 4 runs at. With the new LA kit, there's just no comparison. My buddy spent almost 5 minutes trying to climb a burm out of the river. When he finally got over, I threw the XJ in 4L and first, and let it just crawl at idle over the burm. No tire spin at all, just a nice slow crawl.
The articulation of this kit is impressive as all hell (especially for the price). The first real flex test here:
While this isn't a crazy flex or anything, I posted it to give reference. The above wasn't even a consideration for the kit. I left it in 4L and it crawled up without any help from me, and did so with no engine strain. It felt like my driver front just lifted itself up pre-emptively to stand on the rock. The real test of course is body roll on a flex, so here's that:
So how much body roll is this? No. Just no. Didn't even feel the climb. I was actually real surprised when I stopped and opened the door, because I didn't think I was that high off the ground.
Long short for the OR test, I've never seen or heard of a kit that will perform this well for the dollar. Off road, I'd pit this kit against almost anything else for twice the price.
Summation:
I've heard a lot of horror stories about the kit being incomplete, about brake lines being too short, about bushings wearing out immediately, and the flex joints eating themselves in under 500km. My experience thus far has been different and I suspect I know why people have had issues with the flex joints and bushings.
The kit was complete, brake lines are almost too long, the rear leaves seem a little small, but I've got at least 600lbs of tools in the back so maybe that's normal, and I'm pretty sure there were two issues with bushings/flex joints.
First, RC did acknowledge an issue with a few runs of their bushings and flex joints due to a bad poly mix. They claim to have fixed this. Everyone I've found who was affected, was given new bushings and flex joints without any hassle.
Second, I strongly suspect people are just preloading their bushings a bunch. Nearly every thread were someone's complained about bushing/flexjoint wear, they also describe issues aligning the upper control arms and using a comealong to force it into place. BAAAD idea. Perhaps the instructions are a bit off on the lengths. I just adjusted my drivers upper out by 2 turns and it the bolt just fell into the hole without any force required. I was originally worried about the joints, but after installing and realising what everyone else was doing wrong, I'm not so worried. The flex joints are enormous. Hell, the whole kit seems a bit heavier duty than is necessary for 3400lbs of Jeep. I guess I'll see in a few months if everything holds up.
I will say this. The supplied 2.2 shocks don't feel as good as my old RE remotes, or even my shitty Zone Offroad fronts. Jeep definitely feels a bit bouncier than I'd like, but at the same time it's a very soft bounce (not like a newer pickup where you hit the roof every time you run over a squirrel). One of my fellow wheelers girlfriends was getting sick in his truck from all the bounce. She hopped into mine and I drove over a rock garden/river (average rock is about 10" diameter) at about 40km/h and she said it felt much better than her BF's truck at 5km/h.
All in all, RC should seriously reconsider their CM bolt holes, provide better instructions, and possible do something about their shocks. For the price though, I can't imagine being upset. I'll probably write my own installation instructions and forward them to RC and hopefully they'll either fix the CM bolt holes and figure out the drivers upper length cause it's clearly not correct.
*edit* I forgot to mention that the CM install was even more of a biatch because the transmission mount was about 1/4" to the right of the holes on the CM. RC support told me this was both annoying and expected, and to install the CM first, then drop the transmission down into it while putting some lateral pressure on the transmission. This worked, but I think it may be putting a little strain on my engine mounts. Not a biggy as I've got bombproof mounts that'll probably outlive humanity. Just a consideration RC might want to make.
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