31" tires - modifications continue

Well if you haven't noticed in the earlier post pertaining to tires and required spacers ...the bumper had to be hacked off. The spacers got rid of the problem with tires interfering with the control arms...but they now started grabbing the bumper with even a slight turn. This is a very quick job - only 10 minutes or so - the bumper already has a small ridge, where it can be nicelly cut, therefore I think someone already designed it for this purpose ;)
And no, I did not have to take the bumper off to do this - I have included that picture just to illustrate what's underneath (to tell you the truth I took it off earlier to take measurements for an ARB style bumper...although that project might never come to life as apparently Polish lawmakers want to totally outlaw steel box bumpers ;(.
It would have been sufficient to just cut off the inner corners of the bumper in the wheel well, however this groove was simply asking to be cut...especially since this greatly improves the front descent/ascent angle.
I will be placing a stainless steel radiator guard plate on the bottom soon, and some recovery mounts with shackles soon, therefore keep watching. (Although it will be a while from now, as in 5 hours I will be driving down to the sea for my 2 weeks vacation)

1" Wheel spacers

 
 
The spacer installation was a snap - in case you are wondering - they look like to ones on the picture. I was able to grab a set of used steel ones (not the cheap aluminum crap everyone is selling) suitable for heavy duty offroad use for basically 'spare change'.
So these are now installed, however the tires now stick out too much and I will need to install fender flares to keep the car road legal, however just another 'slight modification' was needed - although if you don't know what to look for, you probably won't notice it ... read the next post then...

Comparison to 'stock' jeep

Here is a picture of my Grand compared to an almost stock (i.e. with the God knows what for installed 'angle od descent reducing piping' ;) on the front), which I happened to come uppon a supermarket parking lot when buing some sockets to install the wheel spacers today.

31 x 10.5 x 15 Tires

 
As I mentioned before ... you need body lift to fit those biger tires. As you can read at many places on the internet, you need to inches of lift to be able to fit 31 x 10.5 x 15 tires ... almost true ;)
Well they fit just fine in the wheel well ... the problem is with tight turns. With an agressive tread like on these Kumho KL71 MT tires, they start grabbing the lower control arms making something like a "K"-turn turn into a 10x K-turn since you are able to turn the wheels just part of the way. To overcome this, there are two solutions:
1. change the wheels to one's with wider spacing ('ET' factor of around -20) - I suspect that people writing on the internet that there were no problems with installing tires of this size probably might have already such wider spaced wheels ...although this causes another problem (more on that in the next post)
2. the other one is to mount special 1" (or wider) spacers, to move the wheels outward.
Since I spoted innexpensive spacers (~$55 for a complete set of German factory made 1" spacers - i.e. not some cheep aluminum DIY job) on one of the Polish auction sites, I swipped them and installed them today.

budget 2" lift - drawbacks

After about a year of driving with the 2" lift, a few drawbacks of the 'budget approach' become aparent. Supposedly 2" is the maximum which does not require additional suspension / driveline modifications etc., nevertheless it does lead to quicker wear of components. As you can see the CV joint failed - fortunatelly everyone here in Poland was sugesting I will need to replace the entire driveshaft, but searching around in the internet I found that the fault which occured here, can be easily fixed with the replacement of one component (unfortunatelly one which was nowhwere to be found in Poland - even though Spicer has a dealer here they wanted to sell me a complete driveshaft ... for a fraction of the cost of a used jeep ;) ) Here again Ebay came to the rescue and I was able to obtain the part for $33,50 including S/H to Poland (about 1/5th of the cost I would have to pay for a used driveshaft in unknown condition).
The part is on the way, therefore I will post some picture of the reinstallation process soon. While at it, I plan on greasing everything with special water repelling lithium greese. I think that it would be wise to drop the transfer case a bit as obviously the CV joint is operating at a too steep angle ... but then again, if I have to drop the transfer case ... might as well go for a 4.5 - 6" lift ;)

2" lift

 
 
So where do you start in making the jeep more off-roadworthy?
You need to lift it - this will provide you with
1. more ground clearance
but that is not the most important, what is the key factor is that
2. you will be able to fit bigger tires
I went with the budget option of 2" as this can be achieved using just innexpensive spacers under the springs.
p.s. if you are looking for some, I got mine from http://extreme-engineering.com/ including the bumpstop extensions (the picture aside is from their web site)... however they also sell on Ebay, where I was able to swipe a set for only $56(a great saving over the $90 they have on the site) where the total including shipping to Poland turned out to $81. If you are not from the USA, there are many such deals on Ebay, but the problem is that many Americans are afraid to ship abroad (but the formalities are realy 'childs play' - all that is needed is just a small additional slip of paper which needs to be filled out, declaring the item description and value for customs purposes in the recipient's country) What was great about Anthony DeFalco is that unlike many of the other ebayers he had no problems whatsoever in sending these to Poland, whilst also (as seen above) having reasonable S/H costs (some of the other's asked would for example ship to Poland but only using UPS etc. for something like 100 to even 250 USD for next day service)
There were good installation instructions included, but I also found a ton of sites ('use Google Luke...') where everything was detailed step by step including pictures. All of these instructions claimed it will take anywhere from 15 minutes to half an hour per wheel. ... it took me over 6 hours and I even had the spring compression tool, which supposedly makes things easier.
However the problem was not with the springs, spacer etc ... but with the f^$#$! optional bumpstops ... original bumpstops are built in such a way, that a rubber stop is pressed into a metal cup screwed to the frame. Unfortunatelly water, salt (winter), sand etc. gets in there and the screws basically become welded to the frame. Therefore being the perfectionist I am, I had to mount the bumpstop spacers also and the majority of the time was fighting with the screws using a blow torch etc. to get them loosened ... and even so one got broken and I had to drill it out, re-thread, etc.

couple weeks later

So what happens to a Jeep after you flip it on the side - you need to replace two pairs of doors and the front fender... a total of ~2800 PLN i.e. ~1000 USD in used parts including repainting. I was suprised how innexpensive this turned out, as a year earlier I have paid a similar amount for just fixing some rusty fenders on my Nissan Sunny and repainting the whole car. As you can see it looks as new ...now also sporting a nice roof case for my photo mast (more about that later)

2 days after

So what do you do after you buy a Jeep? ...of course you go out and test it!
(ascent/descent angles, articulation ...)

And just after two days of fun ... you roll it on a straight dirt road. But with a little help from your friends ...

it's back on it's wheels. So how did this happen. Do you know how everyone tells you to check/replace all belts, fluids etc. after you buy a new vehicle. Well not to often anyone tells you to check the tire pressure. I didn't (mistake #3) Of course this was not the only reason for driving for a bit on two wheels - but if it was OK, the tire would not be taken off the rim and the car would have felt back onto the wheels instead of onto the side (I checked the pressure afterwards and all tires had something in between 15 and 20 PSI of pressure. So my advice: CHECK YOUR TIRE PRESSURE! (especially if you want to 'fly' 60-70 km/h down a dirt road)
The amazing thing is that going on the side did not piss me off as much as sitting in the car afterwards and noticing the text on orange sticker on the sunshade ..you know the one which reads ... "WARNING: Sport Utility Vehicles handle differently from ordinary passenger cars. Avoid sharp turns and abrupt maneuvers. Always keep cargo loads within specified weight limits, distribute cargo evenly and secure it from shifting. For specific details, please read your owner's manual for on-and off-road driving tips. ..."

How did it all start

 
Wait! Wasn't this supposed to be something about the Jeep Grand Cherokee ZJ? Why am I seeing a picture of some 'inferior' vehicles here ;).
Well, I had to write a word or two about how this all started and how I got my jeep. On one of the evenings about two years ago, my friends asked me if perhaps I would like to with them for a little offroading after work ... So I said 'sure' and that was my first mistake ... I got hooked.
After that a couple months passed with a fortune spend on those papers with car adds, 4x4 magazines, internet sites etc. I knew I wanted a Jeep, any Jeep. Howevver, the Cherokee's found here were quite innexpensive, but everything I looked at was usually quite beat up and with the prices of gasoline here, each was already converted to propane with a huge 100-120L gas bottle in the trunk ... which just doesn't make it for me. Then is the Wrangler - a very nice offroad vehicle but 1. here in Poland the prices of these are almost the same as the Grand Cherokee 2. and the interior standard is a little 'lacking' especially if it has to double as a family car. So months passed and I just couldn't find anything ...and then one day I was driving past by a used car dealership and 'there she was' ...
and what do you know ... the next day she was mine ... a beautiful 1997 2.5 Turbo Diesel (mistake #2) Jeep Grand Cherokee in platinum color.