Replacing Rubicon Express control arms on an LJ

Grenadiers

Grenadiers

TJ Enthusiast
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Sep 30, 2020
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St. Paul, MN
My RE suspension is almost as old as my Jeep. I have a long arm kit on the front and a short arm kit on the rear. It’s the Super Flex system, and squeaks like crazy from lack of grease. Lazy owner I think. I removed a lower rear axle arm a week ago, and replaced the flex joint with a poly one, also inserting the sleeve they provided. Took several hours to do so using a ball joint C-clamp as my press. I don’t want to do that again! So, thinking of just buying the replacement arms front and rear. Just don’t know if I should buy the Super Flex or Super Ride arms? It’s a Baja Jeep now, we leave it down here for the summer so not much rock crawling in my future. Sad. Just thinking the super ride might be the least maintenance intensive method to do this. Or is there a bigger benefit to the Super Flex joints? Thoughts?
 
If faced with only that choice I would go with the super flex joints. The super ride are just rubber bushings in an arm with no flexibility. The stock arms use a rubber bushing but the whole arm is designed to flex.
 
Grenadiers said:
My RE suspension is almost as old as my Jeep. I have a long arm kit on the front and a short arm kit on the rear. It’s the Super Flex system, and squeaks like crazy from lack of grease. Lazy owner I think. I removed a lower rear axle arm a week ago, and replaced the flex joint with a poly one, also inserting the sleeve they provided. Took several hours to do so using a ball joint C-clamp as my press. I don’t want to do that again! So, thinking of just buying the replacement arms front and rear. Just don’t know if I should buy the Super Flex or Super Ride arms? It’s a Baja Jeep now, we leave it down here for the summer so not much rock crawling in my future. Sad. Just thinking the super ride might be the least maintenance intensive method to do this. Or is there a bigger benefit to the Super Flex joints? Thoughts?
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Could you replace the whole end joint? I'm a big fan of johnny joints. They may make a replacement forged end that would thread into the existing arm. the joints are not inexpensive (about 65 bucks each), but it should be cheaper than buying all new arms.
 
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Mike_H said:
Could you replace the whole end joint? I'm a big fan of johnny joints. They may make a replacement forged end that would thread into the existing arm. the joints are not inexpensive (about 65 bucks each), but it should be cheaper than buying all new arms.
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If I recall correctly, those RE arms use a joint with the male threaded rod on the arm side, and the female on the joint side - the opposite of a johnny joint. So you can’t throw a set of JJ’s on those arms. But, I don’t know if they were all that way.

OP - is your front suspension a radius arm setup?
 
I was thinking of replacing the entire arm. Super Flex on one end, and the other is the Super Ride, poly bushing. I have replacement bushings for the rest of the system, which I can use the ball joint C-clamp to remove old ones and insert new ones. I'd like to dump the entire RE setup and go with something better for a 4" lift.
 
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