What did you do to your TJ today?

Well, this weekend I learned that I'm an idiot. OK, really, I knew that already; I mean; it's pretty obvious and I'm not a complete idi...uh. 😖
Anyway, I was looking through the threads in the TJ Resources (something I would strongly suggest to everyone!) and ran across the How can I tell how much lift my Jeep Wrangler TJ has? thread. I had seen this thread, or something very much like it, a couple of years ago when I had my 2001, but decided to check my current TJ against the info contained therein. Much to my surprise, what I had been thinking (and telling everyone) was the lift on my TJ was just flat-ass wrong! And, as everyone knows, there is nothing wronger than flat-ass wrong! Oh, the shame 😞. I have been saying that I had a 6" of suspension lift when, in fact, I have right at 4.5" (average - front and rear) of lift! I double-verified this by peering at the very degraded and barely decipherable part numbers printed on my Currie springs and looking them up to find that they are, in fact, 4" lift springs. Combine that with the leveling spacers and we have about 4.5" average.

Soooo, now I am stuck on the horns of a conundrum (or cunnunded on the horns of a stuckrum...never sure 'bout that), because I have a tummy tuck (TerraFlex) that is not quite "fully tucked" due to the fact that I have no body lift and, if I tuck it all the way up, the tranny makes more than casual contact with the body. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it makes full-on porno-style deep-in XXX contact with the body. Even with a 1/2" TC drop spacer, it still does a bit more than just "touchy feely". So now, I want to make it all good and get the max out of the possible tucks of the tummy :rolleyes: but really, don't want to add to my lift any more than is necessary.

I've done the measurements and the math to determine that, as much as I want it to work, a 1/2" body lift just won't quite do it and I will have to go the Full Monty with a 1" BL to make it fly. Or...I could go with a 1/2" TC drop spacer and a 1/2" body lift and be OK (maybe a bit less OK than the 1" BL) and keep the lift as low as possible but loose out on 1/2" of tummy tuckage/break-over angle.

I'm tossed here. If I were running 35 or 37 inch tires, it would be a no brainer (right up my alley), I'd go for the 1" BL. But I'm currently sporting 33's, and will be for a while as I have a brand new set of 33" Micky Thompson MTZ-P3's waiting to go on; so a total of 5.5" of lift may look a bit "overkill". Yes, I know that the 1" increase in lift is mostly about looks and will not substantially affect my ride/performance, but, quoting Billy Crystal, "it's not how you feel, it's how you rook" and I don't want to rook like a total dweeb. I will almost certainly go for 35" tires in the future but, that's...uhm...in the future, and I don't want to screw myself out of desirable benefits now, simply because I don't want to look like a dork (too late) with a "well lifted" TJ on measly 33" tires while, simultaneously, I don't want to look like a complete dork (yep, again, too late) looking toward a, yet-to-be-fulfilled future.

So I ask, what do you think? Anyone out there running 4"-ish suspension lift with a 1" body lift and 33" tires?

I'm not judging here but I think you could have a better "touchy feely" if you made this long-ass (not flat-ass) post the beginning of your own thread. No matter where your post is, all I can offer as a suggestion is to sell those brand new 33" Micky Thompson MTZ-P3's and use that money to buy 35"s. I say this because I don't want you to rook like a total dweeb now and I certainly don't want you to feel like a total dweeb in the semi near future spending time and money to rebuild to get from those 33s to the 35s.
 
I'm not judging here but I think you could have a better "touchy feely" if you made this long-ass (not flat-ass) post the beginning of your own thread. No matter where your post is, all I can offer as a suggestion is to sell those brand new 33" Micky Thompson MTZ-P3's and use that money to buy 35"s. I say this because I don't want you to rook like a total dweeb now and I certainly don't want you to feel like a total dweeb in the semi near future spending time and money to rebuild to get from those 33s to the 35s.
You're right, I should have posted in a separate thread. It started out more along the lines of "what I did" and kinda snowballed.
Thanks for the suggestion. I have considered this but can't swing the cost of the required re-gear at this time. The pics from @RINC, @sourbluff, and @TheBoogieman (thanks guys) make me feel like I can handle the looks with the BL and 33's for now.
 
So I think I've figured out that I need to do some research on this website before starting new mods.
I purchased the Morryde reinforcement kit on discountbandit.com for $283
https://www.discountbandit.com/mor-ryde-tailgate-reinforcement-ki-jp54022.html
It was delivered pretty quickly so I started right away. first things first, remove the torx screws on the tailgate. After stripping 4 torx heads I broke out the extractor set and drilled a hole in the middle of the screw and then promptly broke the extractor in that hole. Ok time to check wranglertjforum.
Plenty of posts mentioning using heat (which I didn't do) and a couple people said to just drill the heads out which worked on a couple of the screws. I was able to heat 2 of the screws and remove them normally. 2 screws had to be drilled out and I still had 1 with the extractor broken in the hole. Apparently that's the nightmare scenario and I ended up spending 1 hour drilling around the screw head and was finally able to knock the hinge off with a hammer.


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I'm about to tackle this myself. Gonna try the heat first.
The heat helped but I still stripped a screw after heating it. Don't be afraid of drilling the screw that method worked really well (unless you are trying to save the hardware or sell it). I think they suggested 3/16 bit and it will continue to drill until the head falls off and you have a ring around your drill bit. Once they are all off I used plyers to unscrew the piece that was left. May need some pb blaster but mine came out real easy, much easier than the screws that I used the torx bit on.
 
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Got the rear wiper and defrost working on the top I picked up Saturday.

fixed the issue causing my drop-down tailgate to close crooked.

One of these days I need to fix the paint gaps from where the hinges were...

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Radiator cracked at the top so I decided to clean the throttle body, put new spark plugs in, cleaned the battery terminals while doing 5 coolant flushes to get rid of existing coolant but had to bypass the heater core. I then ordered a new heater core because that was leaking out of the condensation line for the ac. I’m guessing the radiator cap failed and it built too much pressure. So to make a long day harder I go to put the new Mopar radiator in and they sent me the wrong one with zero oil cooler lines. Jeeps taking a little break for a couple more days :/

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The heater core job is tedious, but not what I'd call difficult.

HIGHLY recommend getting a bunch of little ziplocks and labling where the fasteners come from. I didn't do this and spent way too much time trying to remember what went where.
 
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The heat helped but I still stripped a screw after heating it. Don't be afraid of drilling the screw that method worked really well (unless you are trying to save the hardware or sell it). I think they suggested 3/16 bit and it will continue to drill until the head falls off and you have a ring around your drill bit. Once they are all off I used plyers to unscrew the piece that was left. May need some pb blaster but mine came out real easy, much easier than the screws that I used the torx bit on.
Thanks for the tips!
 
The heater core job is tedious, but not what I'd call difficult.

HIGHLY recommend getting a bunch of little ziplocks and labling where the fasteners come from. I didn't do this and spent way too much time trying to remember what went where.
Yeah that’s a good idea
 
The heater core job is tedious, but not what I'd call difficult.

HIGHLY recommend getting a bunch of little ziplocks and labling where the fasteners come from. I didn't do this and spent way too much time trying to remember what went where.
That is a good idea. I used blue painters tape on every connector I had to unhook. I labeled each side the same number so when I put it all back together I just connected 1 to 1, 2 to 2, 3 to 3, etc.
 
may I ask the military style hood side decal meaning, I get the 05TJ bit lol
The 1941 Willys MB U.S. Army Jeep. The decals come on 05-06' Willys editions. It looked like this when it was purchased.:(
The top, flares, rocker guards and wheels were all green. Camo waterproof seats too. Sold it to a member on another forum for $22,000. It had 14,500 miles on it.


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After the lift, had 2 occasions of horribad wobble, so I re-torqued everything, put in new Teraflex ball joints (only took 5 hours to do both sides including screwing with the grease gun for 45 minutes), have a new adjustable track bar coming, and am putting together the ZJ tie rod shopping list.

Also tires were rubbing the LCAs at full lock so I added 1.5" spacers. I've never run spacers before, but I'm not in love with the fact that you never know if they've loosened up on you unless you take the whole tire off. I used the lock-tite they shipped with, but it's doesn't make me love it any deeper.

New winch arrived this morning, need to find some time to mount that sucker today.
 
1. Fixed my squeaking and sticking clutch by installing the LUK master/slave kit and its now near silent
2. JB Welded the real small exhaust leak on the seam of my muffler
3. Learned that if you let the Jeep run long enough the muffler will get hot enough that with a pair of heavy leather gloves, large flat head screwdriver, small drill bit, you can remove the JB weld from a recently patched weep hole