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? about my "3" inch lift

S

sullju

NAXJA Forum User
Location
East Texas
About 6 months ago I bought the Rusty's 3" lift kit, with the spring packs, for my '89 Cherokee. After installing the lift I noticed the back end sitting a good bit higher than the front. To correct the problem, I bought a set of Daystar 2.5" coil spacers. I've had this set up for about 5 months and the rear is still a good half inch taller than the front. In fact there's about 6 inches between the fender flare and the top of my 31/10.50/15 MT's. I'm just wondering if anyone else has had this "problem", could they have sent me 6" rear springs? Also, I've been experiencing severe DW. I'm running stock LCA's and UCA's and no TC drop kit. With, what I'm assuming to be, 5 1/2" of lift up front, what do I need to correct the DW? Sorry for the book, but I've been scratching my head about this for 4 months and no ammount of research has turned up anyone else having this problem.

Thanks,

Justin
 
im not a genius, but u need to drop the transfer case for the much lift. Its a must about 3 inches and even it is recommanded. im at 3.5 inches but when i go another inch and a half it is the first thing on my list. beats spendin money on a sye.
 
My bigger question is how much lift do I actually have. I bought the 3" but when I do the math it's sitting at over 5 1/2. I guess it could be possible that they sent too short of front springs, but the springs they sent were a good bit taller than the stockers.
 
To figure how much lift you have, measure from the center of the wheel hub to the bottom of the fender flare. Stock measurements are 17.5" front and 17" rear. If you do have 5 1/2" of lift on stock arms, then it is more than likely the cause of your death wobble, with your caster being so far out of whack. You need longer contral arms to fix your caster. You could either spend more money and get new control arms, or call Rusty and tell him you wanted 3" leaf packs and ended up with 6", and you don't want to spend more money to upgrade the rest of the jeep to 6", unless he wants to send you some free control arms. Personally, I would get him to send you new 3" packs. It costs a lot of money to do a 6" lift correctly without any ill affects. You wanted 3" packs, he advertised 3" packs, you should not get 6" packs. I would be a little more understandible if they gave 4.5" to start and eventually break in to close to 3" after six months like RE springs do, but 6"...Dang! [end of rant]
 
GottaBeJeep said:
If you do have 5 1/2" of lift on stock arms, then it is more than likely the cause of your death wobble, with your caster being so far out of whack. You need longer contral arms to fix your caster.
Click to expand...

Caster out of wack is my vote also. Longer controll arms are nessary at 5.5 lift.

Lift Height ---- Lower Arms ---- Upper Arms.
Stock -------- 15 3/4 --------- 15
5 inch -------- 16 5/8 --------- 15 1/4

Give or take.

How do I know?
 
Did you do an alignment? Any kind of lift will toe in the front tires. I had DW till I set my alignment back to 0, then it went away.
 
move over im in the boat...rusty's 3"
mine came out level after using 1 3/4 spacers... i did change the lca and dropped the tran. still vibes. no dw though..
sye coming with a new woods driveshaft
someone once said rusty's springs are lifting assuming for a cargo load of supplies and parts of about 150 lbs
the height was my only issue as the ride is so much better than the stock springs...
i will check the height between the hub and flare and post it in a bit....
 
Thanks for the replies. I have not got the Jeep aligned yet as I was waiting to see if I needed the LCA's or not. I measured the gap between the hub and the fender and it's sitting at about 24" front and rear.

Thanks,

Justin
 
sullju said:
I measured the gap between the hub and the fender and it's sitting at about 24" front and rear.
Click to expand...

:eek: Wow, now that is a 3" lift!! 6.5" front and 6" lift rear, no wonder you are having troubles with stock arms. You really need some uppers and lowers to get things back under control. Hope things work out for you. Do you have an adjustable trackbar, or is that stock as well? If it is stock, that needs to be fixed as well.
 
xjhm

I just noticed that you're in Pikeville. My mom's family lives on Blackberry Creek near Belfry. I might be heading up there for this coming Christmas.
 
Dang, I figured I had more than just 3" under there. Oh well I guess it's better than paying for a 6" and getting a 3". Everything is stock. I was looking to try and spend as little as possible(note:I know that's not a very good idea) and found some adj. LCA's and UCA's from a company called Mako Offroad products. Has anyone heard anything about them? Also is Rusty's tracbar a good choice?
 
Mako is in Salt Lake City, UT and they make ok, kinda cheapy stuff. Actually, I think they have somebody else make it. They sell a TON of cheapo, bare minumum parts lifts on ebay. With 6" of lift, you should really be looking at control arm drop brackets or long arms. The steeper angle your control arms are, the more prone you are to death wobble. Trailmaster and Rubicon express both sell identical drop brackets, but only rubicon sells the braces that go with them to beef them up. Get the braces if you can, they are supposed to make a world of difference.

I run a 6" lift and have the drop brackets on my stock control arms. No death wobble and the ride isn't too bad, except that my springs are a little stiff.

Jared
 
Are you runnin' the RE drop brackets? Did you do anything to the uppers? Also what TC drop kit are you using and did you have to get an SYE? Thanks for the info.

Justin
 
I'm in the boat too... I got my 3" full spring pack last year on my '99 and the rear was WAY higher than the front, and hasn't really settled at all. I haven't been very happy with it. I added some 3/4" spacers in front, and it's mostly level now. I've had lots of trouble with vibes however, and I attribute a lot of that to the spring pack being higher than it should be.
 
Does anyone know the different part numbers for Rusty's spring packs? This should be a for certain way of telling exactly what springs they sent to me. Or I guess maybe I could just call them, no one ever accused me of being smart.lol

Justin


Allright, I just got off the phone with Rusty's and they told me the spring packs, pt.# ROPXJ35-0, is in fact the 3"inch spring pack. The problem is that I don't have enough weight in the rear to make the spring packs settle. I guess I'll be removing the bottom leaf and pulling the coil spacers to try and level everything out.
 
Last edited:
sullju said:
Are you runnin' the RE drop brackets? Did you do anything to the uppers? Also what TC drop kit are you using and did you have to get an SYE? Thanks for the info.

Justin
Click to expand...


I don't know which drop brackets they are - the RE and TrailMasters are identical. Almost like they come from the same shop. The drop brackets drop both uppers and lowers about 3.5-4". I run stock upper and lower arms and they work great. For a t-case drop, I pulled out the studs from the framerail, drilled a couple 1" square pieces of tubing, and used them as spacers with longer bolts. No SYE yet, but I need one. I have some mild to moderate vibes at 6" of lift - mine is a '91 with the 231. For the rear driveline I am going to get a stock front CV driveline at the junkyard for $40. Six States will retube and balance it for $100 more. Then I will have a CV rear driveline with the stock slip yoke for $140, should work great. Hope this helps.

Rusty probably has the part #'s on his website. Good luck.

Jared
 
I would love it if they gave me back the time that I've spent installing and re-installing the lift, seeing as how this will be the third time I've done it. I'm looking into buying the custom 4x4 rear bumper, and once I get that and the swing away and spare tire mounted up, I'll be pulling the rear springs and re-installing the bottom leaf. So that makes it four total, I guess it's better to have to do it this way than to try and stiffent the rear with add-a-leafs though. Oh well, I'll just chalk it up to more experience working on the Cherokee.lol

Justin
 
Yeah, the guy at Rusty's told me the same thing... pull out the bottom leaf... I think that's a cop-out. Also, I've loaded mine down... way down. I've pulled trailers full of furniture, etc. that squatted the back end of my XJ down pretty good and it had no effect on the level of the rear once it was unloaded. Now in a lot of ways, this is good, since we should have little to no settling over the years, unlike other people I've talked to who had a lift that settled down too far. I'd like to get what I paid for, but I guess it'd be worse the other way (if it was less than 3").
 
sullju said:
xjhm

I just noticed that you're in Pikeville. My mom's family lives on Blackberry Creek near Belfry. I might be heading up there for this coming Christmas.
Click to expand...
i just measured mine....... 22 1/2" front and rear...
rusty's 3 inch with spacers in front...

and oh yeah im a hillbilly.....
i've been to blackberry several times
hopefully it may snow a little this upcoming year for christmas... we have had a pretty much snow-free winter so far...sad when you have four wheel fever and nothing to play in...
 
xjhm said:
i just measured mine....... 22 1/2" front and rear...
rusty's 3 inch with spacers in front...

and oh yeah im a hillbilly.....
i've been to blackberry several times
hopefully it may snow a little this upcoming year for christmas... we have had a pretty much snow-free winter so far...sad when you have four wheel fever and nothing to play in...
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was up there 2 Christmas' ago and it snowed pretty good then. Well pretty good considering I live in East Texas. My Uncle used to have a 4wd Ranger, and scare the hell out of me going up and down little goat trails. Fun times though.
 
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