BPB called together a work party for his stocker. The plan was to install a bare essential hill-billy 3" lift. Components would include, 3" Tomken Coils, 3.5" Rubicon Express leaf packs, OME 1" Transfer Case Drop, Skyjacker Nitro Shocks, and some JKS Quick Disconnects (which actually turned out to be Teraflex brand). Pretty straight forward, shouldn't be too complicated...
I cruised out to Woodland to lend a hand. BPB was actually late to his own build party. Eventually he arrived, and immediately got to work on removing the stock sway bar links.
Since new control arms weren't in the build plan. BPB chose spring compressors as his tool of choice.
That's safe right?
After we got our starter beers in, Eric and I got to work on installing the OME t-case drop. The stock bolts came out pretty easy, but when it came to the studs that was a different story. Here we should have realized this XJ was a rust bucket. Ben using the stud remover tool.
Eric spit in the bolt bucket. Around this the Gresham Boys arrived, Redjeep2.0 and OrangeJeep.
Stock coils were out, but Ben ran out of thread on the spring compressors when removing them...
Ben trying not to kill himself with his spring compressors.
I have a theory that the cross member holds the unibody together. Once you take them off, they never line back up correctly. Eric and I decided the only way we're getting it back on is using some mechanical advantage. Some quick come-a-long rigging, and we were golden.
Transfer case drop was installed, Tomken coils were in, so we moved onto shock bushing install.
Driver front was done.
We passed the bushing install off to our friends from the south.