Sorry for the long wait, every weekend its been either snowing or I've been busy with other stuff.
Finally got around to fixing the suspension. Front was a mess and the rear had utterly ruined shocks.
Looks good from afar, right?
From my research this was a rockfather 4" lift kit in the front. Basically it consisted of OME coils and shocks with a custom top bracket and a coil spring spacer (3/8" thick). Theres a number of issues with this suspension. The biggest was the fact that when the suspension was drooped out, the coil would contact the frame causing a loud clunk. And on up travel, the shock would bottom out too early causing an even louder clunk when going over anything larger than an expansion joint. Basically the shock position was all wrong, it didn't limit down travel properly and did not allow proper up travel. This ontop of the fact that there were no coil isolators can make for a noisy ride. The current ride height of the jeep is fine, the CVs angles look good as do the tie rod so i didnt want to change the ride height, just wanted the full travel. So Here is what i did...
Looks the same and has about the same ride height (dropped by 3/4"). But if you take a closer look
Basically just replaced the top plate with a stock OEM top plate. This would have dropped the vehical about 2-2.5" so to regain that, i just installed the factory spring isolators. The end result is a suspension that doesn't bind or make loud noises. I was shocked at the difference it made at first. I know i sacrificed about 2" of downtravel, but i also gained about 4" of up travel. Pulling out the shocks at first was crazy, you could tell the coilovers were too long before i even had them out. Once i had them out i found that even after the ball joints reached their binding angle, the old design was trying to push them near ~2" further! Thats a good way to break a ball joint or control arm. Not only was the suspension quieter, it also worked better. I could actual take speed bumps and road gutter crossings at alot higher speed and the shocks and springs would work excellent. I have not tried it offroad yet because of the snow but i will say these OME shocks are pretty good. Overall wasn't that much work to fix this and costed around $70 total.
The rear was even easier...
I think the rear shocks are bad... LOL. Looked to me like the boot kept water on the top of the shock an rusted it away. When i removed the passenger side it has a couple inches of standing water in the boot. Needless to say it rusted the shaft pretty bad and caused it to leak out nearly all the oil.
In with the new
I got these shocks from the junkyard at $4 a piece. They are from the rear of an 08 jeep commader that had pretty low miles. I didnt see any leaks on the outside and they were pretty clean so i figured i would try them. The length is exactly the same as a dakota rear shock so its perfect for a 2-3" lift in the rear. Fitment would have been easy if the PO didnt bend the shock tabs in to fit the old shocks, which had a narrower bushing. You could tell the old ones were too narrow because the bottom had like 4 washers between the bushing and the shock bracket. Once i got those straightened, the shocks went in no problem. If i had the money, i would have rather installed the OME shocks in the rear, but this is kind of a budget build so these will do just fine. These rear shocks made a world of difference as well. It got rid of the annoying shock clunk and groan from the passenger rear corner. These shocks might be a little on the stiff side but that is fine.
Overall for not much dough invested it totally improved the suspension. Were before i would wince everytime i came to an expansion joint, now its smooth even over those pesky parking lot speed bumps.
Thats all for now. Hopefully the weather cooperates this weekend and i can get alittle more work done. I also have alot to do to my truck to get it ready for a moab trip thats coming up so ive got alot of work ahead of me.
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