95 Jeep Wrangler – Lift Kit – Tires – 4×4 – Rock and Roll!

I bought this bad boy used on ebay about 2 1/2 years ago for $5000. Without a doubt it is my all time favorite vehicle! I’ve put over 50k miles on it (149k on the odom), taken it off roading through the mud/weed fields, snow, woods, LOVE IT! I’ve even got one massive engine fire under my belt! Same engine that was in the fire is still running, but every single thing under the hood that was not un-meltable steel needed to replaced. I can’t read the future, but if I have my way I will be keeping this thing forever.

Everything was factory when I bought it but I’ve improved on it since then.

Specs:
95 Jeep Wrangler YJ, hard top
6 cylinder inline 4.0 liter, automatic, a/c
4″ Leaf Spring Suspension Lift Kit by Rough Country
33″ x 12.50 Cooper Discoverer S/T Tires
4:11 gears and carriers
FULL bolt-in roll cage by RockHard4×4Parts.com
Sublime spare tire cover by my wife

I know that there are plenty of you out there with Jeeps that would put mine to shame, but it’s a work in progress (aren’t they all?) so cut me some slack!

My wish list:
solid trail rated bumper
winch
soft top!
tow hitch, trailer

coil springs <— post your thoughts, coil vs leaf, I have no idea which is better or why. coil definitely looks cooler though, i can see that, but I want performance, let me know!

Any other thoughts, advice, tips, cool stories? Post a comment!
Got a cool jeep? Pics? Link this article to your site (link code in Share/Bookmark at end of post) and I’ll link your site to this article.
Okay, so I promised that when I started this site I would write posts that actually tried to help people. I’ve been having fun writing about my jeep and uploading pics, but I doubt that it has been very helpful… YET!

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Here we go, my tale of the lift and what you need to be prepared for!

Like I said, when I bought my used jeep it was factory, no lift, 30″ or 31″ tires. I had it for about a year and half when I had finally saved up enough money to lift it up and get some real tires.
I found my 4″ lift kit on ebay – you should be able to find something in the neighborhood of $400 – $450 after shipping. I found my tires online, I don’t remember the site, but they were delivered to my jeep guy for about $260 for all 4. Installation was several hours of labor, probably around $450.
Total Price: approximately $1100

I picked up my wrangler and drove out of the lot with a big sh&t-eating grin, I was king of the road!!

Well, sort of.

What I didn’t realize was that my 6 cylinder engine and current factory gears no longer had the power to effectively move my vehicle! In one day my pride and joy had been transformed from a wimpy looking but powerful un-lifted jeep into an awesome looking piece of crap that couldn’t do more than 35 mph up hill. That @sshole in front of you creeping along, yeah, it was me. I’m not going to say that I’m Chuck Liddel, but I consider myself to be a man, not a boy, not a girl. I wanted to cry.

My mileage sank from roughly 15 mpg to a dismal 10 mpg. And yes, as timing would have it, this was last summer (June ‘08) when gas was more than $4 a gallon here in New York! UHHHHGGGGG!!

My engine was straining so hard just to turn the tires that I thought it was going to explode. It was about 3 weeks later that my engine did in fact burst into flames!! I’m not a mechanic and I can’t say for sure whether the fire was a result of the engine strain, the exhaust manifold that had been replaced a week before the fire or the water pump (not fuel pump) that had been replaced two days before the fire… all I know is that I smelled gas and 30 seconds later my engine was a raging inferno as I drove down the road.

Anyway, I had full coverage on the jeep (do it, i don’t care if it costs more!) and so I wound up kind of lucking out with the whole situation. The insurance company declared it totaled and sent me a check for $5700. They said that I could buy it back from them for $500 and that it would retain a clean non-salvage title because it was more than 10 years old. I don’t get the logic, but whatever, that’s their choice, right?

So, I banked my $5200 and worked out a deal with my Jeep guy to fix everything under the hood for $3500, including a real nice upgrade to my differentials/gearing.

And that brings me back to the point of this story, loss of power after installing the big tires and what to do about it. As I understand it there are two ways to overcome this. Put in a more powerful 8 cylinder engine or put in bigger(?) gears. Both are quite costly in both parts and labor. My jeep mechanic had quoted me roughly $800-$1000 for the gears and labor prior to the fire, so I was okay with the $3500 fire repair bill which included the gearing.

Well, that’s my story. My Jeep now has 4:11 gears and carriers and runs like a champ! I can hit 80 mph on the highway (probably more but believe me, in a lifted jeep, scary!), I can pass, I can climb hills both on and off road, I got my baby back!

A buddy of mine had told me that putting in the bigger gears would make my gas mileage worse, my jeep mechanic told me that when he was done working on it my mileage would be better. The mechanic, thankfully, was correct. Whatever he did I am back up to 15mpg and that’s with the big tires.

Lesson learned: If you plan on lifting your jeep and putting on the big tires then you need to be prepared for the extreme loss of power that comes with it. You may be able to suffer through it for a while but ideally you should be ready to invest some more cha-ching into the engine or differentials to compensate.

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