Gunner JKU

Trial and error build-on-a-budget of our JKU Sport.

Our goal: be able to run all the Jeep Badge of Honor Trails. Starting with the easiest and culminating with Rubicon Trail; while maintaining nice driving characteristics and using it as a Daily Driver. Most importantly, we need to do this on a budget!

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We starting in 2018 with a 2017 Jeep Wrangler 4-door Sport, JKU. The mall-crawler of the Wrangler Family.

Here are some things I didn't know:

Out of the 3 models of Wrangler (Sport, Sahara, Rubicon), only the Rubicon is really set up for serious offroad use. (before you argue about this, bear with me, I'll explain)
4 wheel drive doesn't involve putting power to all 4 wheels!!! (only 2 wheels at best)
You can't just put bigger tires on a Jeep
You can't just put bigger/heavier/longer springs and shocks on a jeep to lift it.. (not if you want it to still perform well)
Weight matters. All the aftermarket crap you get to add to your Jeep makes it work harder and more likely to get stuck

So we bought our 2017 JKU Sport and started a learning process.

First thing I wanted to do was lift the Jeep and put bigger tires on it. I think that's true for most people. Turns out, it's not that easy! If you lift more than 2.5" (give or take) then you change the orientation of your axle under your vehicle, and you change the angle at which your driveshaft connects to your axles. The driveshaft has a little play/adjustability, but beyond 2.5" or so you start to need a new driveshaft, control arms, and you might start to need to do something to bring your trackbar and drag link back into a more parallel setup. Plus, of course, the taller you go, the more wind you catch, lower mpg's and higher center of gravity, unless you do a few things to lower your center of gravity... more on that later.

The tires are a whole nother issue. The bigger tires are heavier, and rotating weight has more inertia than static weight, just sitting on the vehicle. Therefore, add 5 lb heavier tires is like adding 20 lbs of static cargo. And if each tire is 5 lbs heavier that would be like adding 80 lbs of payload. Now, if your new rims are heavier, to support those bigger tires, then add that weight too. All your suspension and steering components will be under more stress than they were designed to handle. After learning this, people usually ask, "well how much bigger can I go without causing damage?" But that's a hard question to answer. It kinda depends on how you drive, whether you offroad, and how hardcore you are about it. But a general rule of thumb is going offroad will wear stuff out. Going offroad with bigger tires will wear stuff out quicker, the bigger the tires. The harder the trail and the harder you go, the quicker you'll break things. So, some people will put 35" tires on their Sport Wrangler with it's weak-ass Dana30 front axle and be just fine for years! Other people, like me, will try to be cautious and put only 33" tires (that are light for their size) on a set of lightweight rims, and still break their axle housing in the first few months of ownership!

I started with a Teraflex 2.5" lift with shocks and springs. Smittybilt Rocksliders, and 33" tires. That sounds like a like, but lift was only $750, the Falken wildpeak tires were $150/ea, and the Pro-comp rims were bought used for $30/each. The rocksliders were $300, and they were a mistake, but I'll get to that. I had someone do the lift, because I "wanted it done right" and I had never done one. That was also a mistake, I ended up having to re-do it myself, and correct issues (such as rubbing brake lines, and backwards bump-stops). I should have just done it myself in the first place. lesson learned. Everything else I have done myself, with the execption of welding and gears. I picked the wrong rocksliders. My thinking was that they would provide protection to the undercarriage since I didn't have any extra skid plates, other than what came on the Jeep. But what I didn't realize is that the third bar on the rockslicder hangs down and limits my clearance, including my break-over angle. I could gain an inch or more with a different style of sliders.

This setup was good for a while. I lost some power/torque because of the larger tires, and my speedo wasn't accurate. I had to spend $200 on a programmer that could reset my tire size and re-program my automatic transmission shift points. This was fine for a year or more. I could keep up with other jeeps on the easier trails. I could cross 36" of water (after extending my breather tubes), The jeep floated across sand on the beach, and crawled up steep rocky inclines. It didn't handle mud that great, but I try to avoid mud whenever possible anyway. The Falken Wildpeak AT3W's aren't really awesome mud tires, they don't "clean" or fling mud out very great.

I don't have a picture to show, but I broke my axle housing out on the mud flats past san luis pass on the Texas coast. My wife and I were bombing along and I made a mistake. I was headed toward a water puddle that I thought we had driven through slowly earlier.. but as I was almost on top of it, I realized that it was a different water puddle, and I didn't know how deep it was. It was too late to slow down, and there was a huge hidden hole in this puddle. The jeep hit at maybe 12 mph with a bang! The camera we were filming with went flying, and then we were through and kept going. Everything seemed okay at first, but then I realized the steering wheel was at 90 degrees where it should be!! We limped back to the road and I slid under the jeep to adjust the steering wheel position. As the next few months went by we noticed the differential sagging lower and the tires splayed outwards, because the axle housing was slowly breaking/bending!! My insurance company replaced it with no questions asked!! Thank you Geico! (hope you're not reading this)

The way you find out what you need is to get out there and run some trails, and when you can't do something, you can modify your Jeep to accomplish whatever it is. The first thing that happened to me is that on my buddy's property, I was driving through some low brush, and my front bumper started getting deep scrapes and gouges. When it got a few dents on another trip I decided I needed a steel bumper. I knew I wanted better tire clearance, as I would be going up to 35" tires eventually. I knew I would eventually want a winch. So I picked a bumper that looked like it provided good full-width protection and had a winch plate. What I didn't realize is how much the front end of the Jeep would sag from the combined weight of this bumper plus winch. Bumper was $400 ish.

Now equipped to handle low brush I headed back out to some trails only to get stuck in the mud. Not even deep mud. Not even a wide patch of mud. Just a muddy rut that a guy on a dirt bike had driven through right ahead of me!!

I tried going forward and reverse. I tried 4 low, 4 high. I tried putting rocks and sticks down. You can't really tell from the photo, but the jeep's in a shallow valley, it's uphill in front and behind it. 2 of my tires (1 front and 1 rear) spun and spun.. Because in 4 wheel drive, you only have power to 2 tires. Which front one has the LEAST amount of traction, and whichever rear one has the LEAST amount of traction. it's not awesome. I didn't have a winch, so I had to call someone for help, and get pulled outta this hole. I started saving up for a winch right away.

Went to a local 4x4 park called Hidden Falls, and had a lot of fun sitting in the mud to disconnect my sway bars, and then again after the day was done, trying to get them re-connected. I decided that some kind of quick disconnect system was in my near future. Rubicons come with an electronic disconnect that works well for a while (inside joke).

Saved up for a couple of months and picked up a Smitttybilt XRC 9500 lb winch for under $300. I knew I also wanted lockers, but I also knew I couldn't afford lockers anytime soon. In the meantime, a winch gave me the possiblity of pulling myself out, if there was anything nearby to anchor onto. I also slowly built up a recovery bag that included rope, straps, shackles, snatch blocks, shovel, etc.

I'd call the Jeep pretty effective at this point. But I still wanted more. I wanted mud tires and lockers. If I was going to buy mud tires, I might as well go ahead and get 35's too, but I had three problems. 1. Money, and 2. the fact that my front axle was weak and I knew it firsthand. I discovered that if I put bigger heavier tires on, I'd be likely to wear out my u-joints, ball-joints, and other steering components even quicker. Any kind of impact offroading would be magnified due to the heavier tires. Also my auto transmission was geared to 3.21 and was already having a little trouble with my 33" tires. And 3. I couldn't carry a heavy 35" tire on my tailgate, it just wasn't made for that, I'd have to get a tire carrier.

In the meantime, we continued enjoying the crap out of the Jeep, traveling through Big Bend National Park, and having all kinds of adventures.. learning to work on vehicles..:

driving up the mountains

learning how to install a lift. (yeah, I can't compress the spring with my hands)

taking the dogs to the beach

It brought us together and allowed us to do interesting things that we would never do otherwise.

Watching my wife enjoy looking down on mountaintops..

I was also enjoying the view!

While we had fun enjoying the Jeep, I saved and scrimped and planned and schemed, researching, and hunting for good deals. I knew that it wasn't ready for really serious trails just yet. We were able to get our first Badge of Honor from Black Gap, which Chrisy drove by herself!

While in Big Bend we ended up on a 6 hour trail (River Road West), there was no cell service and I started thinking that if we broke down, it might be days before someone else decided to travel down that particular infrequently traveled trail. I started thinking about communications and what sort of radio would be good to keep in the Jeep. After monhs of research I settled on HAM radio being the best to use in case of emergency to call for help. Communicating with other jeepers would probably be CB or GMRS.

Also, it was starting to get dark. So if it had ended up taking us a couple of more hours than it did, we would have been driving through a barely discernible trail in the dark of night. When we got back home from this trip I added trail lights to the front and added reverse trail lights to my rear bumper requirements.

The solution was to buy a tire carrier, re-gear, truss and gusset and sleeve my axle, and while the gears were getting installed, go ahead and get at least a rear locker. Then I could run my 35" tires and probably just have to replace the ball joints and u-joints, but at least my axle should be okay. Since I found relatively cheap tires (Milestars) all of that together was somewhere in the neighborhood of $5000.00 including a rear bumper that wasn't necessary, strictly speaking, but looks good with the rest of the stuff. That would take me several years to save up, and likely get spent on other things before I ever reached that figure. I ended up having to sell some toys from another hobby. I won't go into that here, but sacrifices had to be made, various gods appeased, etc.

With the new 35" Milestar Patagonia tires on, I found that I didn't have enough clearance when offroading. My tire was getting jammed up into my fender. I cost me nothing to cut my fenders to make them flat. And I added a 1/2" lift all around to help combat the sag from the front and rear bumpers.

Now we're talking.. got about 1/2" fender clearance... not quite max flex though..

As of today the build entails:

Teraflex lift
Rough country adjustable trackbar
Z36 Extreme HD brakes
Pro comp Rims
Milestar Patagonia 35" MT
Wild Hog front bumper with trail lights
Smittybilt SRC Gen 2 rear bumper with reverse led's
Smittybilt 9500 Xrc Winch waterproof
Smittybilt rock sliders
RedRock 4x4 heavy duty Tire Carrier
G2 D30 Truss, gussets, and sleeves
G2 4.56 Gears
Ox Locker (cable type) rear
Poison Spyder front D30 differential cover
front lower control arm skid plates
Wild Hog grab bars, Interior LED lights
Offroad Air Buddy CO2 system to air up my tires FAST