All the parts and some tools I need for the lift install are all organized and ready to get loaded into the Jeep. A friend volunteered his triple stall heated garage for the project.
Lift Prep Complete
Big Tires Need Big Steel
With the 35″ tires on the Jeep, I didn’t feel comfortable with the spare being on the tailgate. I’d rather not just delete the tailgate carrier and put the spare in the back since I do use the back of the Jeep from time to time.
JCR Offroad to the rescue!. Installed the JCR Shield Tire Carrier to carry the load.
Lift Prep
Spent the day trying to rig something up to help me set all of the control arms for my X-Factor lift to the proper length and to assist in torquing down the jam nuts. These jam nuts have to be torqued to well over 200 foot-pounds without misaligning the joints. Not sure if this will do the trick or not.
Early Christmas Presents!
Early Christmas present came. My Rock Krawler 2.5″ X-Factor lift!
New shoes!
Time to upgrade the tires! I got tired of getting stuck in situations that friends with 35″ tires were able to get through.
A fellow Jeep owner was selling his 35″ Duratracs and his wheels. I only wanted the tires, but another friend (Matt) wanted the wheels. So we all met up at Discount Tire to have the seller’s new wheels and tires installed and his old ones unmounted. The seller’s original wheels would go on Matt’s Jeep with his new 37″ tires and the Duratracs would go on my Jeep with my Rugged Ridge wheels. It made more sense to make an appointment and have them do it all at once.
It was a loooooonnnnnnggggg day.
7 hours after our appointment time, they finally got us in the bays.
I won’t go into a lot of detail on how bad of a day this was. Let’s just say it is highly unlikely that I will be going to Discount Tire again anytime soon. I felt like they lied to us and tried to cover up their mismanagement. We had an appointment, but they placed us in the computer as a walk-in so it wouldn’t be reflected on performance evaluations on how long appointment holders wait.
I like the way they looked, though, once installed.
Wheel rim protection
I have Rugged Ridge wheels on my Jeep that I bought from 4 Wheel Parts a year ago. Rugged Ridge has a rim protector designed to protect the rim when wheeling. My rims have quite a few scratches on them already. I’ve been wanting these protectors for a while.
A friend had a set he wasn’t using, so I finally convinced him to sell them to me. But they were painted Mango Tango. That wasn’t going to work for me. So I painted them blue.
In order to install them, I had to remove these decorative bolts that were already in the rims. They were rounded over and had hex key slots. But 50% of them were so damaged, that I couldn’t get a hex key in the slot at all. Some were so seized in the hole that they were easily stripped. In some cases I was able to hammer in an oversized torx bit in some of them and was able to get them out. For the others, I had to use a Dremel to flatten two sides of the bolt and use a Vice Grip to twist it out.
New rock sliders
Decided to take off the Smittybilt side steps and replace them with JCR Classic Sliders. Looking forward to putting them to the test.
Smittybilt Customer Service
When we installed the winch I picked up at the Jeep Bantam Festival, we made a mistake and cross threaded the nut on the ground lug of the winch. I called Smittybilt to buy a replacement and they told me they don’t sell that by itself, but that they would send something out to me. I was also having an issue with the wireless module where the winch would activate by itself. A few weeks later, a really heavy package gets delivered to my house.
Smittybilt sent me an entire new winch! Although they did send me a winch with wire rope instead of synthetic. I had to de-spool all of that wire – which is VERY heavy – and spool on my synthetic. Say what you want about Smittybilt, but they did right by me.
Stickers!
Put on some stickers that I have had for a while. Just hadn’t gotten around to putting them on.
New rear bumper!
Got my new JCR Crusader Mid Width Bumper to replace the OR-FAB bumper that had rusted too early. I ordered the backup lights as well and wired them to the reverse lights. Man, they are bright. I am going to change that so they are switched instead.