Yep. Blaine said I probably didn’t want to attempt 14” shocks with stock width axles. I think he was right
Woodrow's 97 Green TJ Moderate Build
- Thread starter Woodrow
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Yep. Blaine said I probably didn’t want to attempt 14” shocks with stock width axles. I think he was right
Stock width, reasonable back spacing at the wheels on 35's, it is going to be tight everywhere that matters. You can mitigate some of the interference problems by leaning the shock at a severe angle to move it further out of the tire shadow, but that creates problems with shock response.
Keeping the tires tucked closer to the body to maintain as narrow of a track width as possible and keeping the rear slightly narrower than the front has more value in scooting through stuff than most will understand.
Lay out your build philosphy and stick to it, the effort will pay big dividends when you get on the trails and you aren't annoyed by a host of little things that are easily dealt with now.
Lastly, I don't think I said you didn't want to attempt it, I just said I won't say it can't be done, you just won't enjoy it.
All of that is more readily apparent now that I’m in the middle of it.
The history of this rig says I suck at that.
Yep. This is hard enough for me.
As I mentioned yesterday, no jeep work today. My wife’s 153K mi 2017 BMW X3 has had a developing oil leak for at least a year. I initially noticed some oil coming from somewhere higher in the engine several oil changes ago. It wasn’t enough to drop the level or even hit the floor so, since I didn’t easily see the source, I watched and waited for it to declare itself. It ultimately did. A couple of weeks ago, a burning oil smell began to be noticeable, suggesting oil hitting the exhaust. Another look still wasn’t immediately revealing (here’s the N55 3.0 turbo 6 with the cover off):
I’ll talk about the yellow arrow in a sec but you can see how much stuff on top of the engine needs to move to pull the valve cover. It is leaned over to passenger with that being the hot side. The internet said valve cover gasket leaks are fairly common in aged N55s and that made sense since it would dump oil on the exhaust manifold and turbo. I don’t have a good pic but it seemed like there was some seepage at least in the area. So I ordered an OEM gasket set (only $43, if you can believe that). 2 hours in, here’s the cover off:
The red arrow shows the low side with oil pretty much covering the head outside the gasket (and draining down to the exhaust manifold and turbo). I was feeling good about my diagnosis at this point.
Now back to the yellow arrow in the first pic. There were about a million electrical connectors and vacuum lines plus the fuel rail and coil packs to remove. This is not my first rodeo so I knew something, or multiple somethings would break on this old thing, no matter how careful I was. Fortunately, the only casualty was a breather from the intake to the valve cover. VERY brittle.
But, no matter, a little 3/4” hose fixed the issue.
And its all back together. No oil or gas leaks. No codes. I warmed it up and then changed the oil. I’ll leave the engine cover off for a few days while I monitor for fuel or oil leaks and any other issues.
Now back to the TJ…
I’ll talk about the yellow arrow in a sec but you can see how much stuff on top of the engine needs to move to pull the valve cover. It is leaned over to passenger with that being the hot side. The internet said valve cover gasket leaks are fairly common in aged N55s and that made sense since it would dump oil on the exhaust manifold and turbo. I don’t have a good pic but it seemed like there was some seepage at least in the area. So I ordered an OEM gasket set (only $43, if you can believe that). 2 hours in, here’s the cover off:
The red arrow shows the low side with oil pretty much covering the head outside the gasket (and draining down to the exhaust manifold and turbo). I was feeling good about my diagnosis at this point.
Now back to the yellow arrow in the first pic. There were about a million electrical connectors and vacuum lines plus the fuel rail and coil packs to remove. This is not my first rodeo so I knew something, or multiple somethings would break on this old thing, no matter how careful I was. Fortunately, the only casualty was a breather from the intake to the valve cover. VERY brittle.
But, no matter, a little 3/4” hose fixed the issue.
And its all back together. No oil or gas leaks. No codes. I warmed it up and then changed the oil. I’ll leave the engine cover off for a few days while I monitor for fuel or oil leaks and any other issues.
Now back to the TJ…
Last edited:
OK, time for this weekend’s update:
After I finalized the axle position, based on the modified tank, I put tires back on and did some more cycling:
Love that departure angle. Need more fender cut though.
I was thinking I might need to modify the rear torque box to clear at full flex but it looks good
The next big issue (after the stuff in this post) is making room for the coilovers. The Fox 2.0 springs are roughly 3.5” in diameter. This is a challenge with stock width axles. I would love to fit them with a full frame cut (2.5”) and no more but I will probably need to cut into the frame section behind the actual frame another inch. We shall see.
Now that I know where the axle goes, I can finally burn in the frame side brackets:
I added a 1/4” plate to the rear of the Savvy bracket on the inside because my frame splice is about 1.25” behind the bracket so this bridges that junction and the internal backing plates.
A note on symmetry. The right and left center T-case skid bolts are equidistant from the rear so they are excellent references for making sure the brackets are placed evenly.
After brackets were done, the rearmost of the middle 3 body mounts got lifted. As with everything else on this project, the Genright elevated mounts needed to be modified because of the mid-arm bracket being in the way of the tabs that extend over the top of the frame.
But that was pretty straightforward:
Making progress.
Next up, making space for the coilovers:
After I finalized the axle position, based on the modified tank, I put tires back on and did some more cycling:
Love that departure angle. Need more fender cut though.
I was thinking I might need to modify the rear torque box to clear at full flex but it looks good
The next big issue (after the stuff in this post) is making room for the coilovers. The Fox 2.0 springs are roughly 3.5” in diameter. This is a challenge with stock width axles. I would love to fit them with a full frame cut (2.5”) and no more but I will probably need to cut into the frame section behind the actual frame another inch. We shall see.
Now that I know where the axle goes, I can finally burn in the frame side brackets:
I added a 1/4” plate to the rear of the Savvy bracket on the inside because my frame splice is about 1.25” behind the bracket so this bridges that junction and the internal backing plates.
A note on symmetry. The right and left center T-case skid bolts are equidistant from the rear so they are excellent references for making sure the brackets are placed evenly.
After brackets were done, the rearmost of the middle 3 body mounts got lifted. As with everything else on this project, the Genright elevated mounts needed to be modified because of the mid-arm bracket being in the way of the tabs that extend over the top of the frame.
But that was pretty straightforward:
Making progress.
Next up, making space for the coilovers:
Last edited:
OK, time for this weekend’s update:
After I finalized the axle position, based on the modified tank, I put tires back on and did some more cycling:
View attachment 670042
Love that departure angle. Need more fender cut though.
View attachment 670044
I was thinking I might need to modify the rear torque box to clear at full flex but it looks good
View attachment 670043
The next big issue (after the stuff in this post) is making room for the coilovers. The Fox 2.0 springs are roughly 3.5” in diameter. This is a challenge with stock width axles. I would love to fit them with a full frame cut (2.5”) and no more but I will probably need to cut into the frame section behind the actual frame another inch. We shall see.
Now that I know where the axle goes, I can finally burn in the frame side brackets:
View attachment 670045
I added a 1/4” plate to the rear of the Savvy bracket on the inside because my frame splice is about 1.25” behind the bracket so this bridges that junction and the internal backing plates.
A note on symmetry. The right and left center T-case skid bolts are equidistant from the rear so they are excellent references for making sure the brackets are placed evenly.
View attachment 670046
After brackets were done, the rearmost of the middle 3 body mounts got lifted. As with everything else on this project, the Genright elevated mounts needed to be modified because of the mid-arm bracket being in the way of the tabs that extend over the top of the frame.View attachment 670047
But that was pretty straightforward:
View attachment 670048
Making progress.
View attachment 670049
Next up, making space for the coilovers:
View attachment 670050
For people who have never done this before, this is an incredible amount of work and very time consuming to get it done correctly. Great job Mike.