So there I was... just a normal Jeep owner, and I got the itch to put a lift on it. To tell you the truth, I felt pretty confident about doing it myself after investigating and learning how to do it for a few weeks on the internet. I bought a 4.5" Rough Country lift because I just knew that I was going to be disappointed if I went with anything smaller. So I wanted to avoid any disappointment by doing it a little bigger to begin with.

So I started into it and had no idea what kind of things I was about to run into.

*Two words of advice: AIR TOOLS. If you have them, you can cut the install time in half. Just a little FYI.

I decided to start with the front since I had always heard that it is the most time consuming and most difficult.

This is a picture of it when I first jacked up the front end, after I removed the tires and before I started tearing it apart. Those were the days.

The first thing I did was tried to remove the front shock absorbers. The passenger side came off without a problem, but the driver's side was another story. It unbolted from the frame okay, but the nut on the top of the shock was stuck so badly that I almost ended up stripping the entire thing, making it virtually impossible to remove. But luckily with the help of some vice-grips, I got it off.

I have to say that I was very surprised with the tightness of most of the nuts and bolts on the entire suspension system and how hard it was to remove some of them. You have to keep in mind that this is a Jeep that is excellent condition and has minimal rust or wear on the undercarriage. I can only imagine how terribly hard it has to be to try and work on a car even just a few years older with more wear and rust on it.

If I was smart, I would have soaked all the nuts and bolts in grease a week before attempting to put the lift on, but I had no experience in doing this before.

Putting on a lift seems so simple according to the instructions, and it would be too if there weren't obstacles to slow the progress on almost every step of the way. It seemed like once I got past one thing, I would run into another problem. But it all worked out in the end, as you're going to see.

Next I began removing the sway bar links from the sway bar, and the tops both snapped off, causing another expense. It is very common for those to break when trying to remove them, which is okay because I was planning on replacing them anyway. I left the sway bar connected until it came for the install of the new sway bar lowering brackets.

I then removed the track bar from the axle housing and let it hang there. I didn't bother removing it from the frame mount because it looked pretty hairy. Unless you're going to replace the track bar, I would only remove it from the axle mount.

Now, I would say that the hardest and most time consuming part of the whole lift was the removal of the factory lower control arms. I wasn't prepared for them to be such a challenge, and with all the force that I could muster with a 18" ratchet with a cheater bar, I still couldn't get them off. I finally had the aid of a friend, and together we finally got the nuts and bolts to budge. By the time I had gotten to this point, I had already been working on the lift for a good 5 hours. It is a very time consuming project if doing it solo, and you get quite the muscle workout.

With the lower control arms removed, the axle was free to fall, and I lowered it to get the coils off of the front. This picture shows the front axle lowered with the coil just removed.

The shock hadn't been removed from the top yet since I hadn't obtained some vice grips yet to get it out of there. You can see the sway bar link short on top where it snapped, and also the lower control arms have been removed.
This is after I got the shocks removed.

I was quick to learn that the instructions weren't lying when it said that I was going to need coil compressors to install the new coil. I had to compress the new springs almost down the size of the stock springs in order to get them installed and positioned correctly. Check out the difference in size of the old and new coil springs.

This is what it was like trying to get the new coil in place with the coil compressors.

After getting the new coils into place, I put in the new lower control arms, which also was quite difficult. The frame mounts had to be spread just a little with a lot of force for the new arms to fit correctly. But once they finally got positioned correctly, it was just a matter of tightening some nuts and bolts. This is what the new ones looked like after getting them installed.

I then installed the sway bar brackets to the frame and the sway bar, but since my links had snapped at first, it was just hanging there for the time being.
Installing the track bar extension bracket wasn't tough at all. I drilled a 3/8"hole and installed all the parts and the bracket fit nice. The tough part was getting the track bar into the bracket! It just didn't want to fit into the new bracket I ended up having to spread the bracket wider after a lot of force, and then finally got the track bar into position again to install the bolt. I also replaced the sway bar links, which cost 33 bones a piece just for the parts. This is what they looked like after the install.

When that was done I got to put on the new shocks. I was so greased up by this point that I decided to go get at least some of the grease off my hands before touching the new white shock absorbers. When I got them on I put the tires back on and lowered the front to the ground again, and what a site it was to see! I couldn't believe the difference in height of the front vs the rear. It looked like it was going up a hill, or that it had about 5,000 lbs. sitting in the cargo area.

I was very excited at this point because I knew that was well along the way. Here's another look at the finished front-end.

This is the ground underneath where I had been working on my Jeep, and it was just caked with dirt and junk that had come off from the undercarriage and from the old parts.

Later I put on the new front brake line relocating brackets, which gave quite a bit more slack for future off road use. This is what it looked like.

I thought that it was just going to be a matter of a couple more hours and I was going to be done... WRONG! I had started working on the lift around 8 or 9 in the morning, and when I finally got the front back on the ground it was around 8:00 in the evening. I was really tired and exremely dirty. Check out what I looked like after I got done working for the day.

I was going to keep going, but had to rest. Little did I know what was awaiting me...

Before I started working on my lift, I was under the impression that front end would be a lot more difficult to install than the rear, but it turned out to be much more time consuming. I didn't think to lubricate any of the bolts before I started the install, so that was my biggest problem. First of all, the lift kit came with the U-bolts for the rear Dana 35 axle instead of the Chrysler 8.25 axle that I have, so that put me back a day or so. Also it didn't come with the add-a-leafs like it was supposed to, so I had to wait for those to come as well. Here are the pics of the blocks and new U-bolts after I finally got them put on:

The other problem I encountered was that the bolts on the top of the rear shocks were rusted into the undercarriage, and when I tried getting them loose, a couple of them snapped on me. So when I installed the new shocks, I had to drill holes for new screws and it was as good as new. Here are pics after the new holes were drilled.

To reduce driveline vibration and improve the driveline angle, the kit came with a transfer case lowering kit. I had a heck of a time getting the studs unscrewed from the frame, even with vice grips, but they eventually gave. Here's the final product:

I also installed the brake line relocation bracket for the rear, which was kind of a pain, but got it on there.

After I got the rear blocks and add-a-leafs put on, the rear sway bar was rubbing on the tires because I hadn't gotten different offset rims yet, so I just decided to take it off completely. I wasn't too worried about it since most new SUVs don't even come with them. Here's the rear lift and the rear sway bar:

Right after I got the lift done, I took it out to Willard Bay and tested its climbing ability on the dug-out canal. It did great.

Later I decided to test out the flexing ability of the suspension and removed the sway bar links, and used a small elastic cord to hold the sway bar up. Here are some pics of the Jeep on a small ramp. Nothing too incredible, but it's all I had.

My dad took his truck to work and we wanted to go out to the lake, so we hooked it up to my Jeep and it pulled it with ease. The rear leaf springs didn't even budge with all the extra weight on the hitch. I was very pleased.

I went camping on top of a mountain and it had a great view.

These are the before and after pictures of my Jeep. These after pics are before I put the rear add-a-leafs in, so that's why it is sagging in some of them.

This is a picture of my old car on the left, which is a 1981 Toyota Tercel. On the right is a car that I just about bought before I decided I wanted my Jeep. The only regrets that I have are that I probably pay twice as much now for gas as I would have with the Accord. But I think the fun that I have with my Jeep makes up for it.

Here are some stock pics compared to my Jeep after I got it all done with the lift and tires.

Page 1: Jeep Info
Page 2: 4.5" Lift Installation
Page 3: Interior Mods
Page 4: Moab Trip #1
Page 5: Other Mods Pics
Page 6: Moab Trip #2 (Video Clips)
Page 7: Moab Trip #3
Page 8: 8.5" Lift Installation