Furious E's First Sort of a Build Thread: XJ Cherokee Edition

bigdaddylee82 wrote: Rusty Jeep suspension and bushing overhaul has the potential to cause PTSD. Progress looks good, please report back on the Rubicon shocks, I went Sahara or Sport, I think they're a little soft. I've read that the Rubicons can be pretty stiff, but think I'd prefer them. I lost my good 15mm impact socket inside Moby's driver side "frame" rail from when I removed the upper control arm bolt. I'm still bitter about that, and am often tempted to cut a hole, and get a strong magnet to fish it out.

Yea, no kidding lol.

I'll be sure to report back on the shocks, seems like most opinions I've read are pretty mixed as to which is preferable. I went for the Rubicons because 1) my preferences tend to err on the stiffer side and 2) I snagged a pretty good deal on them a few months back.

I'm leaving the stock uppers in place for now (may yet upgrade at some point down the road), so I haven't had to remove the chassis-side bolt completely. I'm hoping I can just bump the nut loose enough without having to hold the head in the frame rail (it's a "flag bolt" right??) to be able to relieve tension on the bushing and re-torque at the new ride height. We'll see how that goes...

In reply to Furious_E:

Yeah there's a tab that's supposed to keep it from spinning, but it won't necessarily keep an impact gun from spinning the whole bolt when presented with a stubborn nut. Also the head of the bolt isn't dead center of the access hole in the "frame," it's offset, hence my loss of a socket as the bolt backed out of the bushing.

I replaced all the hardware, new nuts and bolts everywhere, so I removed and replaced the upper control arm bolts when I swapped in the new upper control arms.

More progress tonight.

Got the passenger side LCA off. Once again, it took the better part of an hour with the reciprocating saw to get the chassis side bolt free of the mount. It certainly wasn't coming out of the sleeve, as even blasting it with the propane torch had no effect.

Quick shot of the IRO control arm next to the stock one. The Iron Rock piece is seriously beefy, and considerably heavier.

With the LCA buttoned back up, I set about removing the UCA bushing. The passenger side is supposed to be a bit easier than the driver's side, and that pretty much was the case. This time, rather than pulling he compressor and air hammer out again, I drilled/burned the bushing out, slit the sleeve with the reciprocating saw, then beat it out with the BFH and a chisel. New bushing went in with the ball joint press and BFH.

And that's where I called it quits for the night because I was hungry

Quick update on this weekend's progress (no pics at the moment, as I'm posting from work and was rather negligent in taking any in the first place):

Got the front end back together Saturday, which was, thankfully, relatively easy going for a change. Only real trouble spot was the track bar bolt at the axle end. There's a tiny little window in the bracket through which the nut must be threaded onto the bolt, which unfortunately leaves little to no room to actually get a wrench on that nut. The factory solves this issue by hanging a long appendage on said nut, which interferes with the bracket and stops the nut's rotation. Unfortunately, I was unable to reuse the OEM nut, as the threads got boogered pretty badly somewhere along the line. Solution was getting my extra long needle-nose pliers on the regular hex nut I used and gripping them with all my might, while torquing the bolt to German specs (guten tight ).

With the front end standing on its own two feet again, I set about very roughly aligning it to approximately 1/8" toe in. I'm planning to have it aligned for reals when I put new tires on in the coming weeks, so I wasn't worried about getting it perfect. Checked the track bar length and luckily guessed right the first time - front axle looks maybe 1/16" off center. Same goes for checking the wheelbase left to right, came out pretty much dead even. That being said, I may yet have to play with the control arms again, as I have no means of checking castor and the pinion looks to be angle up towards the t case a few degrees. Perhaps this doesn't matter as much on the front? I'm just gonna play wait and see here in regards to what driveline issues inevitably arise at the completion of the lift install.

The front is definitely sitting higher than the advertised 3" of lift at this point in time, which is somewhat unsurprising. I measured about 17 1/4" from center of hub to bottom of flare pre-lift, and right around 22" with the lift installed, so about a 4.75" gain. Probably a couple factors at play here. For one, some degree of settling is sure to happen. Two, it was probably sagging beforehand. Three, I went with the Rusty's HD springs, which are a 180 lb/in rate vs 160 for their standard 3" springs. I'm not too concerned,as I like where it sits right now and the OME CS033RB leaf packs are supposedly known to generate a bit more lift than advertised as well. As long as it turns out roughly even front to back that's fine, just increases the chance of needing an SYE, which I am hoping to avoid but prepared to buy if necessary.

So on to the rear then. I got the driver's side leaf pack mostly off with the remainder of my available time on Saturday. This was a shockingly pain-free process in comparison to how the front went (guess that extra week of soaking in PB Blaster did the trick), until I got to the front leaf spring eye bolt, unsurprisingly. I also broke 3/4 upper shock bolts in short order, although that was pretty much a given. I gave up for the day with the spring hanging from the front eye still, as I was worn out by then and had a barbecue to attend.

Picked up again Sunday and put in a rather lazy couple hours of work. Hacked the front eye/bushing sleeve/bushing rubber/mounting bolt apart with a cutting disk on the grinder and much cussing, finally liberating the leaf spring. Next, swapped out the rear brake line for the YJ line, then beat the new bushings into the first leaf spring and set about installing it. I mounted the spring to the axle first with new u bolts and got the front eye lined up with the aid of a jack and 2x4 (re-used the shackle side bolt from the old spring, because again I was SOL trying to find an M14 bolt of ANY size anywhere in town on the weekend ). The shackle side eye is pretty far off, likely requiring me to loosen the bolt mounting the shackle to the body so I can rotate the shackle freely. Like I said, I was feeling lazy yesterday so I left off there.

More to come this week.

Back at it again last night and I made a lot more progress than expected. Again, however, the pictures are lacking. With great effort, I was able to get the upper shackle bolt loose on the driver's side and align the shackle and spring using a combination of floor jack, 2x4, and pry bar.

With the driver's side leaf spring then in place, I moved on to the passenger side, again loosening the U bolts and shackle bolt with relative ease. After doing battle with the front eye bolt on the driver's side, which resulted in my arms being covered in molten rubber debris for several days as a result of cutting through the bushing with a grinder, I was NOT looking forward to going through that experience again. This time, though, my fortunes fared much better. The bolt broke loose with some jumping up and down on the breaker bar and I was actually able to back it out far enough to clear the body side of the mounting bracket. What this meant is I was able to free the spring by only cutting off the portion of the bolt protruding out past the bracket, rather than cut the leaf spring->bushing outer sleeve->bushing->bushing inner sleeve->bolt. Sweet!

So I got the passenger side leaf spring on and set the ol' Cherokee back on its own feet again before dark. Looking really good! The front springs seem to have settled some already, but are probably still sitting at over the advertised 3" of lift. The rear definitely has some slight rake to it, but I'm very pleased with how it sits. I'll do some official post-lift measurements in a few days, but I expect it should end up somewhere in the 3.5-4" range.

Still have to bleed the brakes, deal with the rear shocks (not looking forward to this), and make my quick disconnects for the front sway bar, but I'm off tomorrow and Monday, so expecting a first drive this weekend (and subsequently more work to deal with driveline vibes .)