Rough Country 6.5" long arm - first impressions

[whitexj98]

I hate how low thier arm mounts are.. they could have done a much better design at tucking them up.

 

[blistovmhz]

I hate how low thier arm mounts are.. they could have done a much better design at tucking them up.

I'll let ya'll know if the clearance becomes an issue. Three days of wheelin' with the new kit and I've hit the mounts twice, both in cases where I'd have hit the frame anyway. That 1.5" I don't think is going to cause many issues real world, though I suppose if I was driving in a competition, I might be more worried. For bombing around, I'm not too worried. The angle of the arms usually forces the Jeep to slide pretty well instead of getting hung up.

When I was deciding between the long and short arm kit, I thought about the clearance a lot. I figured I have a trade off in either direction and I just had to decide which was the lesser trade. Short arms give harsh ride and less articulation (or the same articulation with more wear), while long arms have slightly lower clearance but a much more forgiving ride on and off road. The ride harshness of the short arm could be taken care of with some drops, but then we get none of the benefits of the short arm. Ultimately I decided that the stock lower mounts (frame side) had to go anyway as they're weak. Once I got the long arm kit installed and took a good look at the angles and clearance, most of my concerns just floated away. The mounts are ridiculously beefy so if and when i do hit them, I'll either slide or I wont, but either way they'll survive.

I understand the clearance issue for straight long arms, but RC's bent lowers have pretty much the exact same clearance under the frame than the stock mounts, the clearance issue is just moved back about 9 inches instead of being directly behind the wheel.

 

[Comanchedude]

Re: Rough Country 6.5" long arm - first impressio

Nice write up..I have this system bought first run . And I like to see a honest first hand review. I think you are exactly right right you say you can't do better for the money. And yes I can get my front drive shaft out no problems. I like this kit on my MJ and have wheeled it very hard for several years, It's a great value and will deliver performance well a above what most people need. Enjoy bro.

 

[xcm]

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.

Why would RC, or anyone take advice from a moron who bashes the previous owner of a rig for not tightening bolts,
THEN proceed to run it like that? When the PO did it, they probably worked themselves loose, when you did it, you knowingly drove a vehicle with an iffy suspension on the street(I assume).

That shit ain't cool, if that came loose, you very likely would've lost control and driven into oncoming traffic that didn't do anything to deserve a head on collision, get your own shit together before you critique a lift kit.

 

[jimmy96xj]

I love my rc long arms the only things that suck about the kit is the leafs are stiff and my shocks are all redy done and the bolts for the crossmember like to lossen up but aside from that great kit 4 the money

 

[blistovmhz]

Why would RC, or anyone take advice from a moron who bashes the previous owner of a rig for not tightening bolts,
THEN proceed to run it like that? When the PO did it, they probably worked themselves loose, when you did it, you knowingly drove a vehicle with an iffy suspension on the street(I assume).

That shit ain't cool, if that came loose, you very likely would've lost control and driven into oncoming traffic that didn't do anything to deserve a head on collision, get your own shit together before you critique a lift kit.

I didn't drive it without tightening.... Everything was destroyed by the time I bought it. I didn't have access to a garage so I just tightened everything until I had the space to upgrade.

I did however, do something ignorant as hell AFTER installing the lift. I figured since I was in there and stuff was apart, I'd swap in a set of rear discs. I re-used the lines from the donor vehicle and bent them to shape and installed the correct size flare nuts. I did not however, have time (or tools) to fabricate mounts for the flex hose, nor was my bend job super smooth. Last night while screaming across a rock garden, I guess the brake line just had a little movement and broke itself loose from the flare nut (driver side, axle Tee). Lost brakes in the middle of the rock garden. This turned out to be a better work area than I have at home. As everyone had recently given me a hard time about carrying so much stuff in the Jeep, I'd JUST removed my flare nut tool the day before. Turns out you can flare a brake line pretty well with a graduated hex screw. Re-installed the newly flared line, did a quick trail bleed, and good as new.

No, I won't be leaving it like that. After this, I'll be installing new lines and fabricating mounts with zero clearance to the axle.

 

[xcm]

Cool,.
Glad to hear I missread that, sorry.

 

[blistovmhz]

I love my rc long arms the only things that suck about the kit is the leafs are stiff and my shocks are all redy done and the bolts for the crossmember like to lossen up but aside from that great kit 4 the money

What issue do you have with the leafs? Mine ride pretty good (certainly a small step up from my "lightly" worn 4.5" RC's.
My only complaint with the kit now that it's on and I've driven it, is the rear is sitting 3" lower than the front. I'm about to call RC about this as I figure they sent me the wrong shackles, leafs, or ... perhaps I've got a coil spacer I can't see... I do prefer to have the front a little taller for mean approaches, but 3" is too much.

 

[jimmy96xj]

They dont flex as much as id like and the shackle angle but still a good kit I rear ended a guy doing 40 bent the lca mounts so bad it cut the tube and my long arms were still in good shape lol

 

[blistovmhz]

I just got on the horn with RC about the saggy rear end and spoke to Ryan.
Showed him a few pictures and gave him measurements for leafs/shackles, and distance from tire to flare. He said he suspected I just got some leafs that weren't tempered correctly and is sending replacements for free.

I figured while I already had RC footing a base shipping bill, I'd tack on a new bumper and winch as well. I offered to pay the difference on the shipping + the bill for the bumper/winch. He gave me ... pretty much free shipping for the entire order.

Also discussed the Jeep pulling left since install and he immediately said the caster was too far forward, and to just bring in the uppers a few turns and give it a whirl. This was sorta my suspicion but I was impressed that he had an answer immediately.

I suppose I should reserve my comments for AFTER the new leafs solve the sag issue and the caster solves the pulling, but thus far colour me impressed.

I hear a lot of guys say RC's support is better than their hardware... I'll definitely give them kudos for top notch support (there's no comparison to Rubicon Express's non-existent after-sales support), but thus far I've got no complaints about the hardware other than the rear leafs (which they didn't bat an eye about fixing). Yes, there are kits that will flex better, but they all either come with significantly increased cost, or less beefy components. I'm no Long Arm expert by any means (this is my first experience with a long arm in an XJ), but I've ridden in LA'd TJ's and I'm pretty happy with what I got (especially for the price).

I'll update again once the new leafs, bumper, and winch arrive.

 

[GordoSmasho]

I rear ended a guy doing 40 bent the lca mounts so bad it cut the tube and my long arms were still in good shape lol

Probably shouldn't be bragging about this.

 

[jimmy96xj]

Believe me im not proud of that I was just shocked how beefy my long arms

 

[blistovmhz]

Believe me im not proud of that I was just shocked how beefy my long arms

Beefiness. Yup. In the first few days with this kit installed, I've stepped up my wheelin' a tonne. Just looking at the arms will make you think it's a good idea to scream across a rock bed (average rock about 1 foot around) at the top end of low 4th . This then turns out to be a bad idea since you just installed rear discs and didn't have any way to fabricate new brackets for the lines so they flop around until they break off and then you have to crawl around under the Jeep on a river bed, trying (successfully) to make a flare line tool with a screw and a torx bit.

 

[Comanchedude]

Beefiness. Yup. In the first few days with this kit installed, I've stepped up my wheelin' a tonne. Just looking at the arms will make you think it's a good idea to scream across a rock bed (average rock about 1 foot around) at the top end of low 4th . This then turns out to be a bad idea since you just installed rear discs and didn't have any way to fabricate new brackets for the lines so they flop around until they break off and then you have to crawl around under the Jeep on a river bed, trying (successfully) to make a flare line tool with a screw and a torx bit.

oops... ha ha.. you know alot of Jeepers have at some point got so excited we took our rig out with a weak link and paid the price.... it happens, good to see you are able to fix your rig on the spot.. good stuff bro.

 

[Monster3663]

I have had the 6.5 inch kit for about two years now and its worked out great. I added 2 inch spacers in the front and the shackle relocation bracket in the rear which raised the rear even with the front. I ended up converting the steering to Iron Rock Offroad OTK kit and their double shear track bar kit because my steering was maxed out. For the money the kit is definitely worth it. You will be happy with it no doubt.

You can check it out at Youtube.com/monsterjeepz

 

[blistovmhz]

oops... ha ha.. you know alot of Jeepers have at some point got so excited we took our rig out with a weak link and paid the price.... it happens, good to see you are able to fix your rig on the spot.. good stuff bro.

Heh. Did the brakes that day. This weekend my next order from RC came in Friday and we were headed out wheelin' Friday night, so we trail fit the new front bumper and winch.


On that note, I want to bring up RC's support again because they don't get enough credit. Everyone says RC's support is better than their product. I think their support is phenomenal, but their product seems to be pretty good as well. Now, I have ordered and installed two of their lift kits, a bumper and their rs12000 winch, and every order has had something wrong with it. This sucks, but I'd call this a black mark on their QA, and not their actual product.

The bumper and winch that I trail fit over the weekend were another such case. The bumper went on smooth, which suggests that they're not only designing a good bumper, but also taking into design consideration, the fact that the front of every XJ on the planet is seriously warped. The way their bumper installs takes frame variation into account. Installing the bumper actually straightened my frame .
Next however, comes the winch. It's heavy. I'd read somewhere that people were complaining back in 2011 that there was some thin plastic on the winch somewhere, but I couldn't find it, so perhaps they upgraded it. Didn't matter much though as I didn't get a real chance to test it out. Once installed, I pulled 20 ft of cable out for inspection and to test the winch. Found a massive kink under the 4th wrap and decided not to put it under any load. This sorta sucked as I ended up needing the winch later in the weekend. I did still want to test the winch itself, so I pulled the line all the way out for inspection and spooled it back in past the kinks and put a little load on it. Spooling in was great. It's not fast, but it didn't strain or slow down at all pulling my Jeep over a few big ruts. Spooling out under load though, it made some horrible grinding noises so I took the load off and packed it up.

But, called up RC Monday morning (today) and mentioned the cable and grinding. Jimmie (not Ryan for the first time ever) is sending me a new winch with 3 day shipping. Figured once again that I'd take this as an opportunity to upgrade to synthetic line after watching someone mangle their steel cable.
We'll have the new winch tested by this weekend, but once again, RC's support is ridiculous. They don't treat their customers like thieves and when you call in with a problem, they have a replacement in the mail within' a few hours. No ****ing around with "return defective first, THEN we'll send you the replacement". Goddamnit I can't stand when a company insinuates that I'm lying and trying to scam them. No ****ing around with product support is a massive win in my books.

RC's pretty much won me over at this point.
First lift I ordered from them years ago, one of the shackles didn't look like it had enough penetration (welds), and RC threw me new ones without skipping a beat.
Second lift had the wrong leafs (or maybe wrong spring rate) and they shipped new ones same day.
Winch doesn't sound right and cable is kinked, new one in the mail within' an hour of my call.
I've never seen a company stand behind their product this well.

As for the lift itself, I've now got two solid trips on it and I'm pretty happy with it. No, I'm totally happy with it. The shocks leave a bit to be desired on road, but off road they're on par at least, with my RE remotes. The rest of the kit has held up beyond my expectations and I really can't imagine a lot of scenarios where those long arms would bend/break. They're pretty much the strongest part of my Jeep now.

 

[blistovmhz]

So new leafs are installed, but they only brought me up 1".
I decided to measure from the axle to the frame to verify the lift height.
Stock front: 7"
Stock rear: 6"
Lifted front: 13.5"
Lifted rear: 10.75" - Should be 12.5", so we're still 1.75" short.

Discussing with RC again but doesn't sound like they know what's going on. I thought at first that I must have extra thick coil isolators, but the front lift measurement is perfect. 7+6.5=13.5.

I can't imagine any way I could mess this up. I'm pretty confident on the stock specs being 7 and 6 inches measured from the top of the diff to the frame rail. Someone correct me if I'm wrong?
Any idea's on what I may have done? 1.75" is a pretty big "oops I installed something wrong".
I gave RC the shackle measurements and they confirmed they're the right ones.
What gets me though, is that the first set definitely sat 1" lower than the second set. This to me, indicates that their production line is inconsistent, so I've pretty much decided it must be their issue and not mine.

This said, they're more than happy to send another set to me, but I don't want to waste my time or their money on another borked set of leafs. Anyone else run into this with RC or have any suggestions?

 

[98stocker]

I think vehicles typically ride a bit rear high stock. That is why lots of people add leveling kits, which only lift the front a couple inches. I imagine many lift kits have a leveling effect built in, and your Cherokee probably looks pretty level now. If it really bothers you, get a longer shackle out of them. The springs are going to have some variability, so you could spend a lot of time chasing down the tallest ones, or you could just enjoy it as is and go wheeling.

 

[Mach2nh]

I only have the 4.5 kit but my rear sits higher then the front by a good amount. But i don't have any miles on it so nothing is broken in yet.

 

[blistovmhz]

Heh, yea no. My rear is sitting almost a full 2" lower than the front. It's very noticeable from any distance.
At any rate, I talked to RC again tonight and told them I didn't want to have them send me a new set of leafs unless they knew why mine kept being 2" short. We instead opted to try their shackle relocation kit. I figure the first set of leafs rode really well but were 2 and some inches short. The shackle relocation drops things about 1" with the stock shackle installed, so the 6.5" lift shackle adds 2", and all this together should bring me dead level with the front.

RC's sending the relocation kit out tomorrow. This whole thing has been a bit of a pain, but goddamn their support is stellar. Even after 2 bad sets of leafs, a DOA winch, and then the wrong winch cable, I'm still happier with RC than I ever was with RE. Those ****arz (RE) couldn't even SELL me new control arm bushings, a year after I bought the kit.
Will report back about the shackle relocation. If it works, I'd recommend to anyone buying their kit to discuss the option of keeping the stock leafs and just getting RC to send the relocation kit instead. Gives you more adjustment than a set of leafs either way.