LJ handles worse after 4" RockJock and Fox 2.0 install

[mrblaine]

I have 33's. I dropped the tire pressure from 28 to 26 when i changed the pitman arm as someone that tire pressure in this thread. The fox shocks have a reservoir. View attachment 672360

The distance indicated by the red line needs to be about 3/4" or so less than the distance indicated by the green line.
The amount of shock shock showing seems suspect for the length of the shock body. If you can get us an idea of how much travel the shock has and give us an actual measurement for the green line at ride height, that may help figure out a few things. Perspective may be making it worse than it looks.

Is that really how the stabilizer mounts?

 

[mrblaine]

I’m assuming you have adjustable arms if theyre rock jock, how are your pinion angles ?

Pinion angles even horrid ones would only present as a bad vibration. I've not seen mention of that yet or missed it.

 

[mrblaine]

Disclaimer - I admittedly know very little about TJ's in relation to the people on this forum. Stupid configurations and questions should be expected.

Apologies for this neverending thread. And everyone was right about the drop pitman arm. I did indeed have one. I replaced it with a stock pitman arm, which by the way turned out to much more difficult than I thought it would be ( felt like I needed a degree in physics to get the pitman arm off ). I took my jeep out after the replacement. In my head it drove better. The steering also felt lighter. Then I tried adjusting my toe angle to the recommended 1/8" to 1/4" (the before measurement was 1.5".) I adjusted it the best I could to 1/4". This seemed to make the ride a bit worse than the previous toe angle though. Now that I have put quite a bit of miles on it since doing this work, I'm at a loss as to why this thing handles like it does. The pitman arm replacement had a mild improvement. But the ride remains harsher than my previous LJ. Admittedly the roads where I live now are ridiculously bumpy. Driving them feels like being on an old wooden roller coaster that is about to collapse. The ride characteristics I'm experiencing: extremely jarring, and twists when hitting bumps. Can someone recommend anything else to check? Shocks / springs, geometry of something else? I can get more pictures if needed.

It would help if we could pull some descriptions of what it is doing into nomenclature that is more acceptable and commonly used.
Ride quality has nothing to do with handling. Handling is how it steers, how it reacts under braking and acceleration.
Light or heavy feeling steering has little to do with ride quality.
Toe angle doesn't affect ride quality. With the excessive toe angle you had, it should have handled like shit. Non linear, touchy, twitchy, darty, and unsettled. It should have also imparted a variable response under moderate to hard braking. The newbie may confuse some of that since is it so disturbing as detrimental to ride quality, but other than making the driver uncomfortable, they are not connected.

 

[SHAKEY]

I have seen no front end alignment data. Caster should be should be 5* to 6* . This jeep will be unable to keep in 2 lanes over 40 mph unless it has proper caster, steering geometry is critical .
There is nothing with shocks except harsh or mushy ride. Dropped or straight pitman is not critical except that you want steering rods to be as parallel as possible, the reason for dropped pitman arm that should be used with a 4" lift. The TJ/LJ. If you look at the picture of he drop pitman you will see tie rod and relay rod are nearly parallel as it should be. Look at a stock height jeep and you will see that the relay and tie rods are near parallel and they handle as they should : that is the steering geometry that must be maintained.