Short arm length- caster setting

Hey everyone-

Frequent lurker- infrequent poster. I am an experenced jeep nut (have a turbo charged 2.5L TJ and my XJ now) and have multiple jeeps in the past. I also am a professional tech.

(insert whitty smart comment about theivery in the automotive trade here. :looser

My XJ is new to me and only been off road a few times since I have had it- last guy built and never wheeled it drove it for 198K until the flexplate broke then I bought it. It has performed well off road just trying to make it behave better on the pavement.

It is a 98 with a 8" Rough Country Short arm kit, with drop arm brackets for the upper arms, I am running Rusty's arms on it with heim joints on either end, 1 ton cross over steering, N242 SYE Tom Woods, bored and stroked new engine, rebuilt AW4, D44 and HP30.

Ok it is REALLY darty on the road, last time I had in on the alignment rack it was way out of spec for caster and my "C"s are vertical. I need to adjust the upper arms to tilt the axle and therein the caster. This I know :yelclap:

I was wondering if anyone has a similar 8" setup on 35's that wouldn't mind giving me their upper arm measurements for length- so I have a starting point.

lucky14 said:

8" Rough Country Short arm kit, with drop arm brackets for the upper arms, I am running Rusty's arms on it with heim joints on either end, 1 ton cross over steering, N242 SYE Tom Woods, bored and stroked new engine, rebuilt AW4, D44 and HP30.

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8" of lift is to much for drop brackets,period!
It's actually to much lift period!

It is what it is- I don't even think Rough country made the "kit" as it is not on their website... I am just working with what I got. What I think it truly has is 8" coils, rusty's arms, RC drop brackets for upper mount for the arms on the frame rail, and some sort of matching rear leafs. But when I got the XJ off racingjunk.com it was titled as a 8" rough country lift- you have to believe that- its off the internet and EVERYTHING is true on the net.

I have a buddy that has 8" of lift on his XJ and just went to the Rusty's long arm kit otherwise I would have measured his set up. I think in a perfect world it would have been a long arm kit but I don't have the coin I used to so after rebuilding the Aw4 and building the 5.0 I just need to fix what I have.

8" and drop brackets is the same as having 4"and no drop bracket, and at 4" you at the point we ya need to address the pinion and caster angles with long arms or drop brackets. Agreed 8" is way to much. There's is a chart floating around the web for upper and lower arm length and there respective lifts, I'd start with the 4" lift for your arm length.

Are the coils red?

Nope they are grey- like I said it was someone else built it blew it up- he sold it to somone trying to flip it for a profit- he lost interest, so I have it with about as much information as I can figure out on my own. If I use rustys info- it says base setting for their lift is 15 1/2 center to center, RC's info says 16 1/2 center to center. I guess thats about the best guess-timates I will get so if I run out of work tomorrow Ill screw with it unless there is some insight between now and then.

Read the chart at the bottom of this page:

http://www.yuccaman.com/jeep/re_db.html



Also, how/why are you only running drop brackets on the UPPER control arms??

crazyjim said:

Read the chart at the bottom of this page:

http://www.yuccaman.com/jeep/re_db.html



Also, how/why are you only running drop brackets on the UPPER control arms??

Click to expand...

It's both upper and lower if I read it correctly:

RC drop brackets for upper mount for the arms on the frame rail

Click to expand...

crazyjim said:

Read the chart at the bottom of this page:

http://www.yuccaman.com/jeep/re_db.html



Also, how/why are you only running drop brackets on the UPPER control arms??

Click to expand...

I miss typed.. thats how :laugh3: drop brackets on upper mounts for the lower arms.

The chart is wonderful- we are out of work/done for the day so the XJ is on my lift now.. going to start adjusting to 15" and change

Adjusted the arms today-
Right upper adjusted fine was at 14"
Left upper was siezed and needed lots of Igor persuading and the torch and never loosened up fully but it went from 14" to 15.524.
The lowers were spot on at 15 1/2

Went on to the alignment rack- caster had been out from 1.25- and 1.35-
It was no -1.15and 1.11- left and right.
I went to adjust the lowers the drop brackets are slotted to allow for rod adjustment on the RC drop brackets. Yea too bad the lowers are completely rotted solid.

I monkeyed the rods around enough to get -0.8 and -1.03 or so bringing my cross caster into spec but caster is still out a few tenths.

I was in a hurry to leave work so I didn't straightend the steering wheel- just set total toe. She has better returnabilty and is less darty. Ill straighten the wheel in the driveway tomorrow. Thanks for the chart it saved me lots of cussing taking the arms on and off on the alignment rack.

The rig orginally came from VA (oh how I miss living in VA) and then was in southern WVA, I have 0 rust on my rig which is a rarity up here and nothing was rotted together when I pulled the engine and trans.. so I was SHOCKED that I couldn't get the lowers to move and barely could get one of the uppers to move.. all it would have taken is 5 minutes for all 4 arms when they were assembled to put antisieze on them.. thanks to the goof ball that didn't do that.