I have been researching the best, cheapest ways to get a reliable amount of lift and a fairly smooth ride. My best option was to use the leaf springs from a spring under axle truck and mate them to my XJ main pack. Some good donor vehicles for this include earlier Dodge Dakotas, S10 pickups and blazers, Jeep Commanche MJs, etc. In early December I spotted an ebay auction for some 2wd S10 springs out of a 92. He was doing a 4 link and airbags and just wanted them out of his garage. He was about an hour away from me, so I won the auction at $11 and went and picked them up. When I first saw them I noticed they had LOTS of arch. Here's a pic of what they looked like.
They measured 11" even from the floor to the bottom of the overload leaf. I stood on them and the where very soft, exactly what I wanted. A soft leaf pack is sought after for an XJ to match the ever so flexy coil front suspension. I'm hoping this will balance out my flex and keep body roll in technical rocky sections to a minimum.
First, here's a list of what we'll need.
Donor leaf packs
New U bolts, nuts, and washers. Rusty's u bolts do not come with washers so you'll need to pick them up at the hardware store.
New centering pins
New leaf clamps if you don't plan to use the old ones.
Basic hand tools
4.5" angle grinder or something like it
Longer rear brakeline is recomended. I have a line from a 95 YJ that I am putting in this weekend.
Longer shocks. I relocated my shock mounts on the axle, so stock shocks fit perfect.
Anything I missed?
On to the install...
First we need to prep the donor packs to mate to the XJ main leaf. This includes cutting off the spring eyes and leaf clamps off the S10 pack. For the eyes of my S10 packs, the leaf wrapped around the bushing away from the top of the spring. This is good because you can cut partially into the radius and have a nice rounded edge to contact your main leaf. Otherwise there would be a straight cut leaf digging into the main leaf which could possibly cause failure. I used a standard 4.5" angle grinder with a 3/32" cut off wheel to make the cuts. It worked flawlessly. Here's some pics showing where I cut the eyes off.
I also cleaned the edges of my cut with an 80 grit sanding wheel.
Here's a pic of me cutting off the spring clamps. These where riveted on and I couldnt get the rivets to pop off so I just cut them off and used my old clamps. If you need new clamps they are available at any spring shop and I believe most auto parts stores.
The pics get kinda backwards here because the spring clamps are still on in them, but bear with me.
Next you need to seperate the leafs from the pack. The safest way to do this is a 6" C-clamp right next to the center pin and unbolting it. I couldn't get my center pin to unbolt so I cut it off. The pin is under a lot of tension so be sure it isnt aiming at anyone in case it decides to shoot off. With the C-clamp there I had no such problems.
Once you cut/remove the pin you can slowly release the C-clamp and let the pack seperate.
The last step of preperation is cleaning the leafs. I used a wire brush but pretty much any cleaning tool will work. You just want to get rid of the dirt and lose rust to prevent squeeking. You can also paint them with some epoxy based paint for a slippery surface. I didn't have time to do this but may down the road. I am also going to want to put leaf liners inbetween every leaf to minimize the leaf's resistance to flex.
Go out to the driveway and take a before picture like this.
Now you are ready to install the leafs into your XJ. Chock your front wheels, put the jeep in 4wd and park or 1st. Jack up the rear and place jackstands next to the front spring bolt on the unibody "frame rail". Take the tires off and let the axle down. Once at full droop make sure to support the pumpkin with the floor jack. In this pic you can see I used a bumper I was working on for the wheel chock and a set of rockrails i'm making for somebody for some extra jackstand height.
This is what you should see (minus the disc brakes, unless you are special). This pack has a 3" AAL in it and im replacing everything except the main (top) leaf.
You can now remove the u bolts and spring plates. Stock u bolts are an 18mm nut. They will be torqued down so a cheater bar may be needed.
Once you get those off you can move to the shocks. Also an 18mm nut, just unbolt it and slide the bushing off the mount. This is done so the axle can droop enough to have space to work.
Up next is removing the spring clamps. These will be different on pretty much all XJs. Your best bet is cutting them off and getting or making new ones. I saved mine because I just put them on not too long ago. A screwdriver usually does the trick.
After the clamps are off, C-clamp the leaf just like we did on the S10 packs. To get the center pin nut off grab a 1/2" socket and a vise grips to hold the bottom while you unbolt it. You can also cut it off like I did before, just be careful you dont cut into the main leaf.
Now you will want to drop the axle as far as it will go. I used the stock bottle jack from in the jeep to support it and protect my new rotor from slamming into the concrete.
Next up is releasing the C clamp again. Here's a little sequence to show how the pack opens up.
You can see in this picture how my AAL was pretty much holding the entire rear end up by itself. None of the other leafs have any significant arch to them. The S10 pack has all leafs arched fairly equally.
Now the old pack just slides out.
Clean that main leaf some with the wire brush and paint if you want.
I then clamped the main leaf from the S10 pack to the XJ main leaf to make sure the length was right. The screwdriver acts as the center pin to keep the leafs lined up.
As you can see here, it was a little long on the forward side of the pack.
No problem, I just trimmed it to where it ends right under the bushing. That way there isn't a pressure point on the XJ main taking all the weight from the other leafs.
Here's a pic of the S10 portion of the pack layed out.
You can see the overload leaf sits almost flat. The overload will act as a soft bumpstop and prevent the leafs from inverting which causes premature sag. Once the pack becomes flat, the overload with dramatically slow the compression of the suspension.
Now you can clamp the new S10 leafs in position where the old XJ leafs where. Use the new center pins as a guide to make sure they dont shift. This is also where you would want to add in your leaf liners in between the leafs.
The center pin will be way too long. You'll want to trim it down so it fits almost flush with the spring plate that goes over it.
Pull that C clamp out and put your leaf clamps on.
Throw on the spring plates, button up the shocks, add some new u bolts and torque them as tight as you can in a criss cross pattern. You will want to retighten the u bolts at ~50 miles after the install and once more at ~100 miles. This will ensure they won't come loose.
You can see here that the second and third leaf are very close to the spring eye so the weight is now on all three top leafs as opposed to just the main leaf.
Repeat that on the other side and your leaf install is done. Here's an after picture. I got ~4" of lift from this but the important thing is that it rides better and will not sag anytime soon.
Here's the after pic....
Now that your modem has just slit its wrists, if you have any ?s post up.
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