The jeep went under the knife this week for the first piece of major surgery since I've owned her. I purchased a Rugged Ridge 4" Spring lift with new shocks, Rugged Ridge 4" drop pitman arm, Rugged Ridge Slip Yoke Eliminator kit, and Rugged Ridge Telescoping CV Drive Shaft. The only suspension work I had done involving leaf spings prior to this was putting lowering blocks (ironic, eh?) in the S-15 I had in college.
Lift went in first. Holy crap that's tall. To remind those who forgot, the Jeep already had 4.25" of "cheesy lift". That being 3" of body lift and 1.25" of shackle lift. Also, while it generally isn't included in lift specs, the taller tires added bout 2" to the overall height from a stock tire (33" vs. 29"). So, adding 4" of suspension lift has me sitting just shy of a foot higher than stock. It is quite comical to try to get in it now.
Once the lift was done, it was time to dive into the drivetrain moifications. First was the Slip Yoke Eliminator. For those who don't know, the NP231 Transfer Case has a slip yoke in the tailshaft. For a lifted Jeep, with better axle articulation, this can be a problem. With the better articulation it is possible to pull the slip yoke out of the transfer case completely. That's bad. Best case scenario, you drop a driveshaft and lose some fluid. Worst case can get much worse. So an SYE replaces the mainshaft and tail cone of the TC with alternate pieces that mount a fixed yoke. And that's what I installed next. Pulled the skid plate, which it turns out is a bowl whose primary purpose is to serve as a mixing caldren for ATF, gear oil, and mud. Holy crap that was nasty. I've tried not to be as OCD about the jeep as I amwith the racecar, but I still had to clean that for my own sanity. I shoveled probably 10# of this sludge out with a putty knife before I pressure washed it. Disgusting, but better now. Ayway, Skid plate out, TC out, SYE installed. While I had the TC out, I replaced all of the seals. The SYE kit comes with a new rear seal, but I also purchased a front output seal and an input seal for good measure. Hopefully the ATF will now stay where I put it. Also replaced the rear seal in the tranny while it was exposed, though it appeared to be in great shape. Anyway, got it all buttoned up and put it back in the jeep, along with the now clean skid plate.
A short detour in the plan occured about here, as I discovered that my front driveshaft had been rubbing on the exhaust. So I pulled the exhaust, and took it to the work bench to make some room. Turns out it's a muffler shop special with crush bends that managed to turn the 2" round into 1" x 3" oval. Some time in the vice and with the BFH, and I had turned it back into something approximating 2" round. Not before I found that the driveshaft had worn a hole in the pipe though. I didn't want this to turn into a full fledged exhaust project, so I just cut a few scraps and made some patches for the worn through part. Good news - Exhaust is now sealed and clears front driveshaft. On the downside, apparently the hole in the exhaust was responsible for a solid 80% of the good sound my Jeep had, as now it's a rather disapointing over muffled 6. Oh well.
Anyway, exhaust out of the way, we need toget back to the driveline modifications. We still need the ability to lengthen and shorten, that we lost by eliminating the slip yoke, so a telescoping driveshaft is in order. And since a jeep is a short wheel base with a long drivetrain, we end up with a pretty short rear driveshaft. Lifting the vehicle puts it at a steeper angle, which is rough for a standard U-Joint shaft to pull off, so standard practice is to go with a Double Carden driveshaft, which has a more CV-like operation and is better able to deal with the steeper driveshaft angle. So that's what I did. It's a nice piece, with all Spicer components, Installed it and was happy to have a Jeep with all of it's major components in place. This was at roughly8:30 on the 4th, so we took the Jeep to go watch fireworks.
Thi initial drive proved to me that installing the drop pitman wasn't going to be optional, or even something to be put off for a few days. The bump steer was somewhere between scary and dangerous. So, it had to go in. A bit of fighting with it tryingto make it go further onto the sector shaft than it wanted to, but otherwise, easy install. I think (still a bit of research to do) the splines are tapered. If this is the case, then it just goes on as far as it does, and life goes on. If it turns out to be a straight shaft, I still need to figure out why it doesn't want to go on as far as the stock one. Regardless, it's on and the nut is torqued to spec, so I'm driving it like that. The good news is that it makes a HUGE difference in the driveability. bumpsteer is almost completely gone. Huge change for such a small component.
So now, this phase of the Jeep is officially done. Lift is on, SYE / CV driveshaft are in, drop pitman is on, etc. Today was just finishing a few nagging items. Biggest being that with the lift on, my brake lines were real close to acting as limiting straps. Goodridge, etc make extended brake lines, but I didn't feel like waiting for those, so I dug in and by taking a few kinks out of the hard lines and re-locating the tabs where the hard lines meet the flex lines, I was able to get a good 3-4" more travel out of the brake lines, which should be plenty. I'm going to flex it out on the loading dock ramp at work to make sure, but I think that has this problem solved. AFAIK, that was the last of the issues. Took it on a loop that includes interstate and it goes up to ~65mph with no drama (which is about all it's ever been able to do before it tries to shake itself to death).
Oh yeah, even though I was bummed about losing the cool sound my exhaust leak made, apparently it was also the source of my check engine light (makes sense since the leak was directly opposite the O2 sensor). Now I can floor it without being punished by a glowing red light.
I'm stoked.
Now back to Honda E36 M3.
