Lifting your jeep
There is essentially only one reason one would really need to lift a jeep and that is to be able to mount the rim and tire combination that you want. In order to allow proper clearance of the coolest looking set of shoes there are two ways you can do this, body lift or suspension lift.
The body lift is essentially a set of spacers that gets mounted in between the body and the body bushings. Let me note for any first time shade tree guys here. The body bushings do not get removed the spacer goes between the body and the bushings. Surprisingly we have seen a quite a few body lifts done this way. The kits come in two heights 2” or 3 “. The 2” version on the tj and yj look much more esteticly pleasing as the gap from a 3” that is left along the top edge of the frame looks to big and is the reason most people do not want a body lift. With a 2 or 3 inch lift you can still only get 33’s under your yj or tj but if you got a cj and do not plan to take it off road to much you might clear 35’s. There is also a body mount lift kit which replaces the factory bushings with a taller one made from poly urethane as opposed to the factory rubber ones. This style of kit will net you 1” and is usually used in conjunction to a suspension modification to resolve a minor clearance issue. The biggest attraction to the body lift is the price, kits go for around $110.00 and installed should cost you around $400.00.
Suspension lifts are a whole different story, depending on the type of jeep you have there may be a dozen different types of suspension modifications that you can perform to achieve some lift. This article will only cover the scope of comparing the two kinds of lifting methods for jeeps. Suspension kits range from 2” to 6” typically and have a price range from 400.00 to thousands. If you are considering your first lift the most popular choice would be a 4” inch kit, which would allow for 33” tires with ample tire to fender clearance. The advantage of these lifts is that you can improve on your suspensions ability on and off road. Suspension kits are designed to allow for more flexibility off road and thus keeping your tires in contact with the ground in uneven terrain. Without serious modifications the suspension kits can achieve a firmer feel. However inherently the better a suspension works off road the more unstable it becomes on road so the trick would be finding the happy middle road. Shackle lifting is a very cheap way to increase fender to tire clearance on leaf sprung jeeps like the cj and yj models. The lift achieved from this method is minimal what ever the difference in height between the existing shackle to the new one will only net you half of that value. For instance a shackle that is two inches taller than your existing will only gain you 1 inch in lift. Although some folks have installed 12-inch long shackles this is not the right way to do things because it has a very negative effect on the steering geometry by decreasing the caster angle to unacceptable values. The last thing to note about shackle lifts is that to properly install them the shocks generally need to be replaced with longer units. So if you add up the costs of a shackle lift it really is not worth it for the amount of lift you would gain.
The best recommendation for first time lift would be a 2” body lift if you do not plan to go any bigger than 32 in most cases. If you plan to use the jeep off road extensively than a 4” suspension may be in order for you with a set of 33” meats. These are general guides and there is always an exception to any rule.
C. Kaderabek ‘05
