IMPORTANT NOTE:
Installation of this or any other type of kit on your vehicle requires some skill and knowledge of tools, safety procedures and so on. THIS OVERVIEW IS NOT A SET OF INSTRUCTIONS. You must read, understand and follow all of the instructions that come with the kit or parts you're installing. Failure to follow proper procedures and instructions can lead to serious property damage, serious injury or death. Neither this website nor I shall be liable for any damages to property or persons that result from the use of the information presented below.

The Suspension Project - Details

This was an imperfect solution, however.  Over time, the ends of the stock springs began to sag and even bend downward.  Eventually, the front leaf springs were flat under the weight of the vehicle - in other words, they were completely horizontal with no upward sweep in them at all.  So much for going the cheap and lazy route ...
 

Over the winter, I started to research the different lift kits available.  After much deliberation, I finally settled on a Rancho 2" kit that I purchased from the folks at Desert Rat Offroad by mail order.  I substituted RS-9000 shocks for the RS-5000's offered with the kit.  I also purchased an RS-5000 steering stabilizer. Installation of this kit was done in the late winter of 1998.

When the Rancho kit arrived, I was impressed.  The kit was very well made with solid, heavy duty steel components.  Each portion of the kit was clearly labeled - even to the point of having the various part numbers stamped directly into the steel on some parts - and the instructions seemed to be very well written and detailed.

After inspecting my vehicle in detail and looking at the instructions for the kit, I decided to go ahead and purchase new U-bolt kits and new spring seat plates.  I was going back to using the stock spring shackles that I had removed the previous fall, so I also went ahead and bought a new bushing kit for them as well.  The lower bushings come with the Rancho kit, but I wanted to do the upper ones as well.  I ordered all of this from the folks over at Quadratec and decided at that time that it would be neat to do a cat-back as well, so I also ordered the Borla kit from them.

Rear suspension

Doing this is easier said than done, however.  The hose and line must be removed from the bracket and the bracket bend downward without messing up the area where you are going to mount the line and hose back in to after you finish.  Rancho recommends using a ten or twelve inch crescent wrench almost closed to accomplish the task.  Uh huh.  I found that an eight inch wrench was about all I could squeeze into the space available, but it was enough to bend the bracket anyhow.  This job is one of the ones during this project that REQUIRES slow, gentle, easy work.  You just have to "worry" the parts in to line, take lots of time, lots of breaks and just be cool.  Frigging around with the brake lines is no time to play gorilla and it's no time to be impatient.

Brake line moved, I was then able to start on removal of the driver's side leaf spring and shock.  Actually this is the easiest part of the project.  I my case, I was removing the shackles to replace them with the stock units, I didn't care about saving the old U-bolts since I had new ones and I had nice, new spring plates waiting as well.

Friday evening ended about two and a half hours after it started with one leaf spring off, and me tired enough to quit.

Saturday morning, I began by finishing the installation of the driver's side parts.  Look in the picture to the left here and you will see a track bar relocation bracket.  I gotta tell you - this was the single most difficult part of the project.  Fiddly little thing, this bracket.  It is well engineered and very tough, but you gotta have three hands with fourteen fingers to get all the little bits to line up right.

Here's the deal - the track bar gets removed from the stock axle bracket.  The new bracket bolts to two stock holes on the driver's side of the axle mount and uses a new bolt through the original axle bracket mounting hole and the new bracket.  Once installed, it's all very secure and strong.  It's the through bolt on the stock bracket that's the headache.  You have a selection of spacers and washers to fill in the gap between the ears of the bracket where the end of the track bar used to sit.  The object of this is to prevent crushing the bracket and the stock mount when you torque everything down later.   I found that a large and a small spacer was too wide, the large spacer and one washer was too narrow and the large spacer and TWO washers was too wide again.  What I really needed was a washer that was half the thickness of the ones in the kit.

To make a long story short, I eventually coaxed all the parts into place and got the relocation bracket installed.  This part of the project alone took over an hour to do right.

The rest of the driver's side went easily.  You'll also notice a new bumpstop spacer in the photo - this gets bolted in under one of the U-bolts.  If you look really, really carefully, you'll see a little silver line just above the leaf spring and just below the axle pad.  This is a 2.5 degree tilt wedge that rotates the rear axle up in front slightly to help maintain correct drive line angles.  The passenger side went easier than the driver's side - no relocation bracket!  The top nuts on the rear shocks on a YJ are a little bit of a bitch, but that's not the kit's fault - it's just a Jeep Thing.  I mounted the shocks so that the adjustment knob can be gotten to by reaching in over the top of the tire and over the frame under the body - it's, um, actually easier than it sounds.
 

Transfer case lowering

Lowering the case is really very simple - perhaps the simplest part of the project.  Simply loosen the engine mounts slightly, set a floor jack under the center of the skid plate, remove the bolts, lower the skid plate and case, insert the supplied spacers, install the new bolts and viola - your done.

Oh yeah - don't forget to re-tourque the engine mount bolts.  You get really strange sounds from under the hood if you don't ...

I did not have major problems with the shifters after this - Rancho cautions that you may have to modify the floor pan slightly to allow smooth shifting into reverse.  I experienced only a slight sluggishness going into second gear, but this was due to the rubber shift boot inside the cab bunching up against the center console.  This was easily corrected by relocating the shifter boot slightly.
 
 

Front Suspension

OK, obvious.  But when they attach stuff to the frame before the body shell is dropped onto the chassis, you get situations where some fasteners become a whole lot less accessible.  The screws holding the stock brake line brackets to the frame are two of these fasteners.  And of course, being Jeep hardware, they're TORX as well...

Removing the screws finally became another "worrying" task.  I used a reversible right angle driver with a TORX bit installed and just slowly, about 1/32 of a turn at a time, worked them out.  Putting them back in through the new brackets was a little easier due to the fact that the bulk of the brake line and hose connection was now out of the way.

This is another place for slow, gentle and careful - you have to do quite a bending job on two brake lines and it's worth taking the extra time to do it right.

Once the brake lines were done, it was simply a matter of removing the leaf springs and moving ahead with the remainder of the kit.

The front requires a track bar relocation bracket as well.  It goes in far easier than the rear one.  Just two bolts and an easy fit.

The toughest part of the front end on my vehicle was the removal of the U-bolts.  The nuts were quite solidly rusted in place and required a liberal application of "Liquid Wrench" and the full bore drive of a 1/2" impact wrench to get them to move.  Even at that, I really thought one of them was going to have to be cut off.  I finally worked the nuts loose by using the impact wrench in a foward-backward-forward-backward method until the nuts very reluctantly came off.

Installation of the new leaf springs on the front required some creative jack use as well.  I actually had to jack up the spring to flatten it a bit so that the bottom of the axle pad would seat properly before installing the spring plates and U-bolts.  The new U-bolt nuts go on at 90 ft-lbs.

Front shock absorber installation is very easy and took all of about 15 minutes per side to do.  Adjuster knobs on the front shocks end up on the bottom due to the shock design - we'll see how well the knobs hold up down there.
 

General Notes

You'll want to have at least one good torque wrench to do this job - two are better, one for the high torque applications, and one for low.  I have one wrench that goes from 45 - 205 ft-lbs and another that goes from 10 - 75 ft-lbs.  I also have a fairly complete set of 1/2" and 3/8" sockets, ratchets, breaker bars, etc., as well as a good set of metric and english open end, box and combination wrenches.  An impact wrench is almost a must as well.  The bolts you're taking off are torqued to as much as 165 ft-lbs ... and they're rusty.  Oh yeah, and follow "Tool use 101" and use the impact wrench only to REMOVE nuts and bolts.  Use the torque wrench to tighten them.

One note on torquing bolts.  For this kit, it is vital that you leave the final torque of the leaf spring bolts and track bars bolts until the vehicle is back on its tires and sitting on the ground.  Sounds easy, huh?  The two top track bar mounts that have to be torqued back up to 105 ft-lbs ARE A BITCH TO GET TO with the vehicle on the ground and on its tires.  You CANNOT torque these with the vehicle in the air, though, so you gotta get creative with wrenches to make it work.
 
 

Borla Cat-Back System

Easy is the only word I can use to describe this project.  Well, OK, easy AFTER removing the Chrysler stock exhaust parts.  You find out real quick that there is a reason why muffler shops have cutting torches handy at all times.

I did this project in one evening.  Total time elapsed, approximately three hours.  Most of that was spent removing the old exhaust parts and making sure the new ones fit properly.

Original pipe was cut off just aft of the muffler.  Muffler and converter unfortunately came out as one unit, requiring a half hour or so of fiddling and VERY CAREFUL mallet work to get them separated.  Converter was an easy re-install, then it was simply a matter of sizing the remaining stock pipe for length, hanging the muffler and tailpipe then tightening everything up.

Biggest surprise during this project?  How hard it is to remove the stock muffler from the rubber mounts.  Jeep uses these lovely "mushroom head" mounts that very, very securely push through the rubber body mount.  Removal?  Imagine your author with both feet up against the body of the Jeep with one arm wrapped around the rear axle and the other wedged in above the muffler while lying on the floor on a creeper ...

I didn't curse too much.

The fit and finish on this product is wonderful.  Welding beads are smooth and carefully done, bends and flares in the pipes are smooth and even.  Even the muffler clamps supplied are high quality!  Everything fits together effortlessly.  Hangers fit just where they're supposed to and pipe bends are in just the right places.

I noticed an immediate increase in general "oomph" from the Jeep after this job was done.  My fuel economy is starting to increase and you just can't beat the just-right throaty sound now.

On top of all that, having that softly gleaming stainless steel under a muddy Jeep just plain looks cool.

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