| We'll I've been waiting for a opportunity to install my bb this weekend. And man what a pain in the ass it ended up being. Here's my timeline:
Saturday 5/3/03
10:00am: Get the jeep in the driveway, jack up the rear, place it on jackstands and remove the tires. Start working on the drivers side first. We'll none of the u-clamp bolts will budge. After just about breaking my arm trying to get them loose, I end up on stripping one. At this point I was growing frustrated. I soaked all bolts for about the past wk and they were still a bear. Finally I give up and head to my fathers house to pick up his air guns. Lucky a couple of months ago my fathers friend gave me an ancient GE air compressor(the thing works like a charm).
12:00pm: Get back from my fathers and my walmart run for additional air hose and female couplers. Get everything together and get back to work. Remove all U-clamp bolts except the one I stripped. I ended up spending another 20 minutes just removing it by hand w/ vice grips. Around this time my cousin shows up to lend a hand. I get the u-clamps off, put clamps on the springs, clean up the center pin bolt and try to remove it. But all the fawking thing did was spin. Spent another 20 minutes trying to figure out how to get the thing off. Finally pulled out the hack saw and sawed it off(Damn grade 8 bolts). After that was done we removed the leaf clamps, seperated the leafs and wrestled the new leaf in. Compressed the leafs, installed new center pin and put everything back together.
2:00pm: Yes, it took me that long to do just the drivers side. We get started on the passenger side, same procedure as above only this time we ran into no problems and it was smooth sailing.
3:00pm: Rears done, Put the tires on and removed the jackstands.
At this point, I decided to work on my cousins truck b/c he needed brakes really bad and I didn't want to run into any problems and not be able to fix his brakes. This ended up being an adventure as PepBoys screwed him and gave him the wrong rotors. We learned we had the wrong ones after we had everything apart. Since my cousin has an 84 datsun truck, parts are hard to find. It took about an hour of calling around to locate the parts and then we had to pick them up.
6:00pm: Finish the brake job on my cousins truck. At this point the wife was getting hungry so we stopped and made dinner.
7:00pm: Started on the front passenger side. Put the jeep in jackstands and removed the tires. removed the shock, removed the spring retainer bolt(if that's what its called) and put the spring compressors on. Ofcourse I didn't have a large enough socket for the spring compressors so me and my cousin took turns. We jacked up the passenger side which made it easier to compress. Once done we jacked up the driver side and that allowed up enough room to remove the spring. Installed spacer and then we had to redo the spring compressors on the the spring because it was not even. Once that was done I jacked up the driver side as high as I could and we stuffed the spring in.
7:40pm: It was getting chilly and we were both tired so we put the tools away and called it a night. The cleanup took about another half hour as I must have had every tool I owned in the driveway.
Sunday 5/4/03
12:00pm: Sleeped in late to recover from my sore body. Got started on the driver side front and it was cake. Only took me a half hour to do. Put the shocks back on, reinstalled swaybar, smacked the tires on and removed the jackstands.
1:00pm: lift finally completed. Took her for a drive and it was great.
I initially had 3.5" in the rear but that settled to 3" overnight and has stayed there. I ended up with 2.5" in the front. I am even all around at 20" from the center of the hubs.
Recommendations to those who plan on doing this:
1. Soak all bolts for a month(not a wk).
2. Air tools, Air tools, Air tools(they are not necessary, but make the job a whole lot easier)
3. Plan on possibly running into problems and allow yourself plenty of time.
4. Patience, Patience, Patience( A couple of times I almost lost my cool and put a brick throught the window.)
Vibes: I know everybody is wondering about vibes since my XJ is a 96. And Yes I ended up with vibes. Only between 45 and 55mph and not really noticable unless your looking for them but enough for me to add the tcd once I got home today. TCD appears to have eliminated the vibes. And I will have to say the tcd was a pain in the ass too. Those fawking studs were a bitch to remove w/ vice grips. Took me about 2 hrs to do in the rain.
Ride Quality: The ride has stiffed up but the ride was already stiff before so it doesn't feel any different.
Spending a total of about 10hrs working on your XJ: Priceless
Special thanks to my cousin Angelo for his mechanical expertise and muscle. And a special thanks to my wife for putting up with my crap.
I'll have pics up soon.
June
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