33" tires and min. lift?

After reading and searhing for several days I have found many usful articles on lifting an XJ on this forum. I wanted to suck up all of this info. before asking any questions. I have a stock 1996 XJ Classic w/4.0 h.o. and stock ecos. It will not be a dd, but will be required to be road driven on the week ends. I am intending on running 33" tires with as min. lift as possible. I don't mind cutting this near perfect body for clearance, already have Tj flares to install. Also have some lift components, but need a direction as far as the hight is concerned. I will be building the rear springs and using full length coils. what is the min. lift to clear 33" tires with fender trimming. I am trying to accomplish as big a tire as possible with the min. amount of suspension parts being chnged. I.E. LCAs, drive shaft lengths, pinion angles etc. I am inclined to go 3-5" as it appears to need the least amount of suspension changes. Can someone please inform me, I realize there is alot to consider, but I am on an extreme budget and am quite used to fabricating and building stuff rather than purchasing them. I can not afford the sye kits so this is a major deterent in my lift choices. I do have a 97 4.0 ZJ complete running gear for any parts that may be swapped. Thanks in advance for your help. Art

We're running about 2.75"s of actual lift with 33's. The lift is the extreme budget lift, consisting of F-250 coils+ spacer up front, and blocks in the rear.
Haven't needed to change LCA's,shocks, anything steering related, nor have we needed to adjust driveline angles.
It's not the ideal lift/tire combo for rock crawling, but for mud and mild trails it's perfect.
Flex is decent, not great, but decent.
As far as up-travel is concerned, theres 7"s in the front and about 6.5"s in the rear.
I can post pics if you want.

Please post pics.

I have some 33" BFGs MTs to go on my 98' 2 dr dd and I'm putting in a TJ 30 lockright with 4.88 gears & a EB 9" 4.88 gears with a spool and want to keep it as low as possible also. I have the big dog 91' on 37's for the hard stuff. I have a bb now with 31's, but plan on 3-4" with 33's and lots of cutting and TJ flares.

Ive got about 4" or so of lift, and 33" TSL's(measure out to almost 34"). Trimmed front and rear. Only reason Id go a few inches taller, is to fit bigger tires better.

I would recommend atleast 4" of lift. I run 32s and I rubbed alot with almost 6 inches of lift. Did lots of trimming and now have more bumpstops

I seen a guy running 36's on a 3" lift. Of course there was extensive cutting and modification but it was done. I personalle ran 33's on 4" of lift. I now have same 33's on 6" of lift and it is better in my opinion.

CanMan said:

Ive got about 4" or so of lift, and 33" TSL's(measure out to almost 34"). Trimmed front and rear. Only reason Id go a few inches taller, is to fit bigger tires better.

Click to expand...

Got any pics?

Ive seen it done on a 2" and wouldn't go higher than 3". But what everyone doesn't realize is that even if you lift it, you need to address bumpstops, a lift changes the ride height, The suspension will still be able to compress as much as stock, so a 33 will rub at any height unless your running super-stiff springs.

this is where bumpstops come into play.

and for comparisons sake, here is 35's on 4" I liked the setup, very stable, but the tires sucked.



my old setup was 3" and 32's, then for the hell of it i decided to put in some 2" spacers I had lying around. I was much happier with the 3" than 5".

Thanks for the responses, exactly what I was looking for, for the 6" guys how much more involved is it going this high? I have 6" frt coils and am working on lca's, but I am trying to keep from having to address the DS issues. Can I get away with 6" and use stock drive shafts or will I need to go less? Thanks again and pics are great for comparisons.:roll:

ya the most lift you can go before getting a slip yoke kit is, 4.5 thats what i got and i have 32s and when they were new they would rub when u took a corner and were flexing it out. but 33s would be find under 4.5.

Heres a couple pics:



Before the rear fenders were folded in:

jeepster96 said:

ya the most lift you can go before getting a slip yoke kit is, 4.5

Click to expand...

Not true.
There's really no certain height that causes you to need an SYE, because all Jeeps react different to different heights.
There's Jeeps on here with 6"s of lift with only a T-case drop, and yet there's some that have required one with only a 2" lift.
It all depends on the Jeep, and you have to experiment to find out when you need it.
Anyways, back on topic now.
:conceited

mine at 3" lift was "doable/driveable", but was eating u-joints. so i put in a slip yoke eliminator instead of making "cheap" fixes, and it's been beautiful since.

I don't understand why XJs of the same year vintage, before 96' when the t-case changed a bit and you can take off the rear driveshaft and not lose t-case fluid would be different (also 97'+ ones with the same drivetrain and mods, I think a good deal of this is personal interpretation, not different results), some needing a SYE and others not. I know all about the benefits of a SYE and doing things right, but this is my dd and I'm on a budget and want to work around the parameters of 33's and a small lift and trimming heavily and running TJ flares or going flaresless are o.k. with me. I have a 91' XJ on HP44/9" with 8" of lift and 37's that is my wheeler so 33's I feel will not make the 91' too jealous! :laugh3: The 91' does sit for months and months on end, but it will get some love when I'm fully moved in to my new place!

I think it's pretty neat to try to think outside of the box a little. Sure more lift like 6" would make things so easy and you could run 33's without much fender troubles, but this also means a host of mods to make it work like SYE, longer brake lines, CAs, driveshafts and steering mods, new track bar etc etc. and probably still a fair amount of fender trimming.

On a side note, we have a 33's and a 3" lift thread that I resurrected so maybe we can let this thread die? It has lots of nice pics by Ramsey and Chero King....as does this one I guess ;-)

Here is the other thread: http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=45964