Nice - there is some great mountain biking in your neck of the woods - rode over there for a few days last year. I ended up going with just some Monroe OE Spectrum shocks and the H&R lift springs from Essex in Vancouver, which was a good deal at $450 to my door. Ended up with 1.5 inches of lift over the stock ride height.
How do you like the H&R springs? You should post a photo of your KJ. I was initially looking at those as well, they're a good price for us in Canada. I imagine they ride a bit smoother than the OME 927 heavy duty springs.
How are your suspension angles? You're sitting at 20.5" front and back then? When my front was at 20.5" before my set up sagged down to 19.5", the angles were actually really good, better than they were when I was at 17.5-18" on old sagged springs. The KJs initially were made to sit at 20" I believe, but after a rollover during testing, they were lowered 1" to sit at 19".
I did find out a bit more about these "Deeke's" control arms I have coming tomorrow, it sounds like a few people did snap the grease fittings off of the connection point for greasing the control arm bushings, so that is one mark against them already. I imagine they could be replaced and fitted with some better quality ones by drilling a new hole and plugging the old broken off zerk, or by drilling it out and fitting a new one in its place (it looks like 2 guys in the reviews snapped the grease fitting off, but the threaded base remained in the arm).
At least now that I know about this, I can be very careful when greasing them and doing anything with the fittings. I imagine these guys were unaware of this issue and just applied a bit too much force to them, but clearly the grease zerks are not very good quality, at least the ones for the bushings. It doesn't bode well, but the rest of the arms look strong and welded well, and this was only mentioned in 2 out of 21 reviews, and both reviews mentioning the broken fitting were Cherokee arms, none of the Liberty arm reviews mentioned breaking the grease zerks off.
It does look like maybe, a JBA ball joint would bolt up to this arm, so at least if these joints don't last long, I could always drop in a JBA ball joint potentially and still be ahead by a few hundred dollars.
As to what you said about mountain biking up here, you are correct on that, I live just outside of Duncan, if you know where that is, on Mount Tzouhalem, if you happen to have been riding up here when on the island, you would've been right beside my house. There is a lot of great trails right across the street from me, it's a very popular spot for mountain biking for people on the island. It's worth checking it out if you're out this way again. You would probably see my KJ in the driveway just across the road from the parking area if you do!
Have you considered the ironman (iron rock off-road maybe actually?) rear control arms? They look really good and beefy, I think the kit was around $700 CAD last I checked on eBay. At 1.5" they wouldn't be needed, but I imagine they are much higher quality and look pretty sweet compared to the stock rear arms.
When you have the chance, post a picture of your KJ. I'd like to see it. I'm at 19.5" front right now, 21" rear. Planning to go for 21.5-22" front and rear, with OME springs upfront and a clevis lift, and adding an extra isolator or 2 to the BDS springs I have in the rear.
rocky-road.com
