Mr. Bonedale's 2006 Jeep Wrangler Rubicon Unlimited

Mr. Bonedale

New Member
Supporting Member
Joined
Mar 12, 2019
Messages
2
Location
Carbondale, CO
This is my Jeep. I purchased new in 2006 after hearing it was the last year of the Unlimited (LJ). I really like the 2 door, long wheelbase platform as well as the 4.0L power plant, transmission, transfer case, Dana 44's, etc, etc.

The build was designed to keep as much of a 'stock' look as possible while pushing performance and ride comfort up to a point where I could easily and comfortably take the family hiking and camping nearly anywhere. It's very deceiving visually and difficult to really get a feel for the scale of the Jeep until you get up close or park next to a 'tiny' stock Rubicon. It easily fits 37" tires with only 2" of suspension lift, but I feel 35's are the sweet spot for where and how I drive. It's still fun to see reactions when we comfortably roll over big terrain and never bump or scrape a thing.

The performance goals were to keep the center of gravity as low as possible while squeezing out as much ground clearance as possible. Comfort and drivability are very important as my wife would be driving it occasionally and wouldn't tolerate a squirmy ride. With only about 50k miles on it, it's still super tight and drives like a dream on and off road.

List of most of the major mods are on my profile. AEV, Nth Degree and Genright are the primary manufactures I leaned on to get it dialed in.


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The AEV Highline kit and all, very, very nice!

I personally think they look better with 35s and 2" of lift with the highline kits. I see them with 37s, but I think it looks a bit too big in my opinion.

That's one hell of a sweet looking LJ you've got there. For my next one, I'm planning to buy an AEV LJ hopefully, so something very similar!
 
Yep, agree on the 35's v. 37's. AEV sure did things right for the LJ. I'm glad I built this while they still were making all the parts for it. A HEMI V8 would have been nice but wasn't in the budget. It still goes 80 mph on the highway and has a fuel economy sweet spot at about 68 mph so I should be content. But, it would be fun to play around with the V8 under the hood!

Just need to find the perfect bumper / winch combination for the front. I'll be poking around on the forums for ideas on this last piece.
 
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I'll tell you what, those AEV highline kits are rare as hens teeth now. Every so often they pop up for sale and they are gone within 24 hours, and regularly sell for over $5000 not including shipping!

Amazing, isn't it?
 
Thought I would move here considering we will be talking about your build.

Very nice setup for sure! I’m always on the look out for LJs especially AEV builds. Typically if I’m up valley that far it’s during the week which would make sense why I haven’t seen yours.

Did you do the install yourself? If not who did it for you? The guy (Chris) said he probably did theee or so back when they came out but only recall Terry’s because they’re close friends.

I’m running 35s too. But for me it’s because I’m not ready to step up with the big boys and go to Dana 60s and everything else that’s needed. In the one pic the rear is stuffed up there pretty high. How much fender had to be cut if any at all? Do you know how much up travel you have? Mines on jack stands maybe tonight or tomorrow I will be cycling the suspension trying to get a grasp of it.

Yes the highline is fairly sought after for a few nuts. I flew to Phoenix last weekend to get mine because the guy didn’t want to deal with shipping it. But I’m after the same look as yourself, factory and modest.
 
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