Castor, castor and castor!

[ME4WD]

If you have wrangler (or any rig with solid axles front and rear and four points suspension) , and you lifted it and you tell me that you don't have the adj. front and rear upper and lower control arms and your lift is over 3" and you haven't got the CV shafts, then your upgrade is cr@p... Do a proper job and don't save money on the wrong mods.

With the adj. upper and lower front and rear arms, you correct the castor reading and rectify the bearing angle - drive shaft. If you have a TJ, without this and proper CV shafts, good luck with vibrations.

If you have a wrangler JK with the same scenario, get the adj arms and the CV shafts (1310 or 1350 HD) and fix the castor (minimum 4,3 degrees front and 4.1 rear on a 2 door JK) if not and the reason of this post... 8O

I broke my OE shafts and vibs were overkill that if I continued 10 m more I would have cracked my tranny.

Last but not least if you lift a wrangler and you ignored the alignment job by a pro to fix the castor front, you will end up with a car that have the desire to drive like a mad camel on the high way.

Don't you ignore any of these issues so you have a piece of mind. Reason I missed doing this with my big-foot JK was that the shafts were on backorder from my supplier (J.E.Real) and I thought I could get my stock ones to handle the stress. I was mistaken .

[iguana]

Nice info Frank, Thank you

Even with my OME 2.5" lift (Actually 2" with the metal bumper and winch) I had to change my Drive shaft to avoid vibrations

[Bulldozer]

Good Info man what about the 2.5" lift kit does it require adjustment / shaft work

[khaiwi]

Absolutely right Frank,

SYE and Short rear drive shaft, both adjustable trackbars to re-center the diffs ( and be keen on adjusting them dont leave it to the mechanic). And yes, above 3-4" lift you need the adjustable control arms upper/lower to correct the angle.

Was wondering if I can order brand new KJ with half of it stripped off (Fender flares, tires, axles, diffs, drive shafts, control arms, track bars, intake, catback, bumpers etc etc) and order them directly from reliable performance source......

[ME4WD]

It would be nice to be able to order JK's stripped! . On the other question on the 2.5" lift, if your TJ/JK is auto, you don't need to change the drive shaft or fit a full SYE kit (on TJ) but I advice you to fit adj. control arms so you can correct your castor and kill all vibrations.

This might sound a bit crazy but it is a proven technique... If your lift is 3" (ONLY in the case of TJ) you can ignore to drop your tranny (do not fit the tranny / skid drop kit, simply do not drop it and ignore the spacers) with the help of your adj. arms you can fix the castor and as well correct the bearing angle on the drive shaft specially front on the 2 doors version. You can even save more clearence by fitting a belly-up skid plate instead of your stock one, doing this you will be getting 3.6" extra tummy clearence! If your TJ is auto and on 3" lift (max 4") you can still do what I just dscribed by simply adding 1" body lift kit. ZERO VIBS and MORE CLEARENCE.

Even more, you can order adjustable ball joints for your front Dana 30! (lower and upper) with this you can further more tweak the castor as well as camber (in case you pushed your axle hard so it got bent a bit - up to 3.8 degrees of positive or negative castor/camber). This is another cheaper solution if you have a bent axle and instead of fixing it back (not something I advice you to go for), you can pay around 300$ for these and get the issue out of your way!

[khaiwi]

Well said Frank,

I had the adjustable front ball joints for sometime but it was like pain in the a**, u know its just a work around and not right. Finally put back the regular ball joints and fixed the front axle then added proper axle support (Thanks Emil).

[iguana]

Yes Frank, I've done the same as Khaiwi, adjustable ball joints does not help fixing the issue of bent axles ... Better fix them and add the re-inforcement from Emil and you can jump as much as you can