Expo CJ ride height

[korisu56]

My question is for you guys cause I'm not doing a lot of rock crawling and whatnot. I wheel the CJ mildly, but its more for the long trips and stuff.

My original plan was no lift with bigger tires using tubes and high lining. However, I'm looking at a bunch of expo rigs with guys that really know what they're doing and they have some pretty big jeeps. Granted non of them are over 35's, but it still begs the question. Is it better to lift your vitals (engine, tranny, etc) higher from the ground?

[Black Dog]

Getting your engine and stuff higher up will always help with ground clearance. Even if you just do a little bit bigger tires though that will still raise it some. If you're going to do bigger tires though, its best to go with a lift kit, even if it is just some shackles or coil spacers or whatever.

[korisu56]

Well, at the end of the day I'll only get clearance with tire size because the lowest hanging bits will be the axles and there's only one way to get them up.

I was planning on just tubing and high lining, which I can get 34x9.50 or 10.50's on with no lift.

[Root Moose]

Before you decide anything go out into the laneway with your Jeep and some jackstands and place your Jeep off the ground as if it was sitting on 31s, 33s, 35s.

Now try getting in and out of the Jeep. At a certain height you'll find it is more trouble than it is worth. For me that occurs at around 4" of lift and 33" tires.

From there you can plan your suspension and tire/wheel combination.

$0.02

[Desert Dan]

Tell us more about your CJ is is a 3 speed or 4 speed? What axles do you have?

I wouldn't lift a CJ more than a few inches because of the short rear drive shaft.

Look into RE or Rancho springs with full military wrapped springs.

I would stay with 33" or less tires.

Adjustable lockers would be great too.

[korisu56]

I have a build thread on here some where. Let me go dig it out.

'84 w/ 4.2 and T5. Dana 30/AMC 20.

I had a TJ on 35's and that was almost too much trouble. I was going low COG with this once so it WOULD elevate with the tires, but not too much cause of lift. I think I'm going to just stick to my original plan

[Root Moose]

FWIW, I'm a fan of adding TJ flares (i.e. cutting the tub) and then adding whatever suspension is required to make your selected tire size fit. This is on a YJ in particular but I'm pretty certain the same principles apply.

[BIGdaddy]

Tell us more about your CJ is is a 3 speed or 4 speed? What axles do you have?

I wouldn't lift a CJ more than a few inches because of the short rear drive shaft.

Look into RE or Rancho springs with full military wrapped springs.

I would stay with 33" or less tires.

Adjustable lockers would be great too.

[korisu56]

lmao. c'mon, if i can let it slide so can you. ahaha

[1x1_Speed_Craig]

I'm a big fan of the pizza cutters, and ran them on my old CJ-10a. What year is your CJ, though? I'm very familiar with CJs, and it seems like you'd have to do quite a bit of trimming to fit these tires without a lift. My buddy ran them on his Scrambler with 2 1/2" of lift (looked/worked great).

Oh, and you could always run portal axles to get more ground clearance.

Craig

Here's my old tug conversion, BTW: