Road Trip with Red, Part 3

After the addition of a couple hundred miles, a few more door dings, and some rocker-guard scuffs, it came time for us to put a lift kit on our project TJ, also known as Red. We decided that the best way to choose a lift and tires was to put ourselves into the shoes of you, the reader. What would you most likely do if you had recently started making payments on a new TJ, had gone through two or three oil changes, and were ready to lift your Jeep? Our answer was to find a quality lift kit that had everything we would need, and a set of tires that would fit into what type of driving we would be doing with Red.

So we started looking for a kit that, A) wouldn’t break the already strained bank account, B) would keep the on-road ride good, and C) make Red a lot more capable off-road. We also had to take into consideration that without a tailshaft conversion, a lift much higher than 2 or 3 inches would make Red’s mini rear driveshaft vibrate and shake like an overloaded washing machine. Our next concern was that too big a tire might ugly our nice fenders or sap Red’s highway power too much. Plus Red came from the factory with 15x8-inch wheels, which was not a cheap option, so why not keep them? After browsing some catalogs we decided to use Rancho’s 2 ½-inch RockCrawler kit with a set of RS 9000 shocks. This kit, when combined with RS 9000 or RS 5000 series shocks, provides everything you will need to lift your TJ except for an alignment. The best part is the Rancho kit will allow us to easily clear some 32x11.50-15 Goodyear MT/Rs on Red’s factory wheels, plus the kit comes with a transfer case lowering kit to help us avoid those vibrations.