Robert, Sergey, Shalom, William, Garry, Ryan, Chris L., and huge thanks to my wonderful wife, Kathryn, for her outstanding patience, tolerance, and the never ending supply of clean floors and coffee. I appreciate your patience with me, your helping hands, sounding board functions, and mostly your friendship. Big, Big thanks, I could not have done it without you all, each and every one.
It's now time to get caught up on some stuff and we will do that.
I picked JV as the place for my shakedown run with my finally completed rig.
It took about a day and a half of being nervous to finally comprehend how well it worked. No noises out of place, no loose components, no ill handling of any kind, and this included a 55 mph run back to camp with no balance on the tires, no steering stabilizer, and no rock ram. One hand required on the steering wheel and only a bit heavy feeling from the larger diameter tires.
We ran Sunbonnet Pass, Big Johnson, and finished off with Clawhammer. There was not one single part of any of these trails that my jeep struggled with. The 37" MT/R's are just amazing in their ability to stick on stuff. It's a toss-up at this point to try and find some 15's for the rear. I almost don't want to mess with it because of how well they work.
In all fairness though, I was with a few other rigs, notably Sergey, Robert, Garry, Paul and Rich, none of whom struggled much either.
I was impressed with the level of stability that appeared in my jeep. Not the tiniest bit of discomfort in offcamber stuff, the rear doesn't squat when the front suspension unloads climbing stuff.
The steering is awesome, I had zero trouble achieving lock to lock at any angle.
The 4:88's seem just right for that tire size. Massive amounts of compression braking, plenty of ability to generate tire speed when needed, and acceleration in 4-hi is acceptable.
Brakes seemed troublesome at first but started behaving themselves quite nicely after awhile. Pedal is still a bit on the soft side and upping the bore size on the master should cure that.
The only major issue was my inability to figure out the rear swaybar link length. They are too long and cause the swaybar arms to smack into the tub on big whoops. Easily cured and we'll try it again.
All in all I am highly pleased, my expectations have been exceeded by a factor of about 10.
I forgot to mention flex. It seems to do alright in that area.
Some helped by purchasing my take-off parts and without that assistance, I could not have gotten done either. Seth, William, Robert, Sergey, and probably some I have forgotten, thanks for that help. It has been a long 3 months during which I have worked at this build-up at least some each and every day. I took off one weekend to go compete with Garry and the rest of the time was spent on the build-up. I am ready for a tiny break now.
I will have this post moved to the bottom of Test Fit thread when I get it updated with the last of the modification photos.
It is impossible to ascertain the value of something until you have paid for it a few times.