I was just talking about that with Mrs Tox. My Jeep with 86k of very hard miles over 8ish years had the heater resister pack go out once, the fog light switch stuck on, radiator leaked 3 times, front calipers seized twice (I blame once on a shop that likely didn't bleed them before removing), transmission got a weird hole in the case, shifter rod broke, but that's about it as far as problems that weren't self made problems. Yes, I had a very rusty frame, but it still had 1/2 of it's thickness remaining and wasn't a safety concern at all. Maybe I'm just choosing to remember the good times. Lol.
Correct, and there are a lot of toes to step on here that I don't want to step on, so let's see if I can navigate these waters without derailing the thread... One of the reasons why I avoided even starting this thread for so long...
The shop that did the work didn't install the outboarded rear shocks or the front raised towers with the Jeep on the ground at ride height. You can start to see this being mentioned at the end of Chris' build thread. The result was 1.5" of up travel in the rear and limit strapped to maybe 4" of down travel, so 5.5" of total travel on a 12" shock. The fronts were better but not perfect. For those not in the know, the ideal numbers to shoot for with this setup would be around 50% up travel, 50% down travel — or 6" up, 6" down.
After meeting Chris and buying the Jeep we decided to go the long way home back to WI and say hi to Blaine and spend the week at King of the Hammers. After a few miles we met up with another forum member in Corvallis to remove the front driveshaft which was clearly not happy with life. Mrs Tox started the driving down very excited about her new Jeep but it quickly became apparent that something was majorly wrong with the steering and probably other suspension parts. I've had more experience driving things that don't drive well than she does so I took over for the rest of the 900ish miles and barely kept it between the lines. What was going to be a quick visit at Blaine's turned into 4 days of 3 of us working on it and replacing parts. Ranging from replacing the steering gear to tightening jam nuts that were backed off by an inch to remounting the exhaust so it wasn't hard mounted to the body. We also threw on a stock rear sway bar and ordered a new front driveshaft. The Jeep transformed from being unable to control to giving Mrs Tox confidence to drive and from being unable to hold a conversation yelling at 55mph to being able to talk normally. Once we got back to Blaine's again from KOH the new front DS had arrived and we went off on our way home. If anyone has any specific questions about that feel free to ask.
During that time we came up with a plan for dealing with the horrible ride quality from the shocks. I was neck deep in my own build and had wanted this Jeep to be ready to drive and not be it's own project so we measured an 11" shock to replace the 12" shock in the rear and we learned that it'd give a livable amount of travel both up and down. Everything about it is a compromise so I didn't have to cut the towers out of the frame to redo them. Why I don't talk about this much is because THERE IS NOTHING ABOUT THIS THAT I'D PURPOSELY DO, and I know how the internet works and if there's pictures of it people will share it and say that it can be done and not understand why it shouldn't be done. I would like to redo them eventually and set up the travel to be perfect.
The other thing is that the shock tuning wasn't to my liking. It felt extremely harsh going over small things and would bottom out going over large things. Just going down the highway, would leave you fatigued. I posted a full review someplace else on this forum that I'm sure somebody can find after searching. Needless to say, all 4 shocks have been retuned by someone else and now give very predictable handling to the Jeep on the street and offroad.
I probably missed something so feel free to ask for clarification.
Even not being as technical as you, I know enough of the prior work to get the gist. Without trying to be too pointed, my hesitation in some comments seems clarified.
It’s great that @Mrs Tox didn’t chop up her gut feeling to it being “a Jeep thing”, more of us need to hone that feeling and question what we are experiencing.