Crown Heavy Duty vs. Custom Heim Steering

I have had the terrible Rusty's kit on for about 4 years now and needless to say it's gotta go. My Jeep has been put on trail duty since I got a new DD so it needs to withstand some trail abuse. No rockcrawling, just trails around here in the northeast. I'm on about 4.5" lift and 32's. I plan to stay with this setup for a while.

I am torn between spending $170 on the Crown kit, putting the driver's side TRE over the knuckle and not looking back. However, I know a well built heim setup would be very beefy. It would also require a lot of fabrication and down time (I would go full over the knuckle and relocate and build a new trackbar), which is possible and within my abilities, but I'm not sure the extra beef would pay off for what I plan to be doing.

Thoughts?

I ran my draglink on top of the knuckle and my tierod below with Heims and 1"I'd tube. Pretty easy job and if you can fab some plates to double shear the Heims then it's super strong. Buy a local guy some beer and throw him some cash to do the trackbar and some double shear brackets

cjsxj87 said:

http://completeoffroad.com/i-124127-tie-rod-drag-link-kit-dana-3044-and-60.html

Click to expand...

I am running a home made version of this and don't really like it. I have bent several of the combo TRE and it rotates when you steer, giving you a small dead band right in the middle. The dead band can be corrected by using a spacer around the tre. I am adding hydroassist to keep from bending.

Looked at the Complete Offroad kit and don't really want to go that route for the reason old man mentioned. I have a spare set of knuckles I was going to fab tabs on so both the tie rod and drag link could be OTK. Then I could just swap them on. I'm more concerned with building the trackbar setup from scratch. I work in a shop with all kinds of welders and have a MIG of my own at home so I could do it.

Guess I was looking for opinions on whether going through all the work for steering on a D30 with 32's was worth it. The ZJ setup would go on in a day easy, be beefy, and be done. Maybe I'm just being lazy.:dunno:

I say throw the ZJ tie rod on and call it a day.

If/when you decide to go bigger address it then, not like a ZJ tie rod is expensive.