1995 YJ lift questions

Chad

Chad

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Noob here. Just got a 95 rio grande with the 4 cylinder. I want to do some wheeling with it so I'm looking for some direction on lifts. How much can the 4 cylinder and axles take? How much lift before I need to extend brake lines and such? Can I do a body lift in combination with a suspension lift? Should I put a locker in the rear dana 35? Any info you guys can give me would be much appreciated

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Unless it's going to be an off-road only vehicle, I wouldn't put bigger than a 31" tire on there. Anything bigger than that and it's going to make your life miserable when driving on highways or those higher speeds.

A perfect recipe would be 31s, a 2" lift, and call it a day. If you want to go bigger than that, you're going to need to start looking into chromoly axle shafts, bigger brakes, re-gearing, and a lot of other stuff.

It all depends on what tire size you want to run. So let's start with that :)
 
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I plan on doing mostly off road and only occasionally on road. I currently have an 02 liberty that I lifted several years ago and bought the YJ so I could have a little more versatility off road. Currently I have 245 75 15 on the liberty. You can only lift the liberty about 2 inches so that tire is as big as I could go.
I did have a rear locker installed in the liberty and that helped tremendously but ground clearance has always been an issue so that's one of the issues I would like to solve with the YJ

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My 2.5 YJ has 31" x 10.5 tires and driving with those all but eliminates the need for 5th gear unless on level roads or down hills. Changing the diff ratios from 4.10 to 4.88 will bring it back to the normal RPM ranges. I just don't want to spend the $600 for parts.

I like the way it looks and drives though, very smooth.
 
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Flyer58 said:
My 2.5 YJ has 31" x 10.5 tires and driving with those all but eliminates the need for 5th gear unless on level roads or down hills. Changing the diff ratios from 4.10 to 4.88 will bring it back to the normal RPM ranges. I just don't want to spend the $600 for parts.

I like the way it looks and drives though, very smooth.
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What's your wheel offset?
 
I have no idea about the offset but I know they don't rub during any full turns. I might be able to get a rough measurement. No lift kit that I'm aware of and original shocks judging by the rust.

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I can't get an accurate measurement but here is the info stamped on the rims. Using a cheap tape measure it looks like a zero offset

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2 inch springs, 31’s, anything otherwise and you need a lot of coin IMO.

Dutchman Axle carries some chromoly axle shafts for Dana 35’s with stock splines or bigger splines at the diff, I would highly recommend the upgraded spline count. An ARB would be great, making it a super35 with the upgraded splines/axle material.

The front could benifit from the XJ one piece axle shaft mod. If it were me I would also run chromo axle shafts up front and a locker and it would be very capable.

While youre in the diffs, you might as well regear to support 33’s. Wheel it with your 31’s and then in the future, upgrade to 4 inch leafs and 33’s.

Once you go with 4 inch leafs, you’ll want to look at extended brake lines. I would advise you to check uptravel and downtravel flex making sure that even with the 2 inch leafs you're not running into issues with the factory brake lines.
 
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Fouledplugs said:
2 inch springs, 31’s, anything otherwise and you need a lot of coin IMO.

Dutchman Axle carries some chromoly axle shafts for Dana 35’s with stock splines or bigger splines at the diff, I would highly recommend the upgraded spline count. An ARB would be great, making it a super35 with the upgraded splines/axle material.

The front could benifit from the XJ one piece axle shaft mod. If it were me I would also run chromo axle shafts up front and a locker and it would be very capable.

While youre in the diffs, you might as well regear to support 33’s. Wheel it with your 31’s and then in the future, upgrade to 4 inch leafs and 33’s.

Once you go with 4 inch leafs, you’ll want to look at extended brake lines. I would advise you to check uptravel and downtravel flex making sure that even with the 2 inch leafs you're not running into issues with the factory brake line
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Fouledplugs said:
At 2 inches, Im not sure if you need a Slip Yoke Eliminator. Someone might chime in on that one. But it couldn't hurt. JB conversions sells the shortest one.
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I like to choose the JB standard SYE because I've seen a lot of reports that the speed sensors he supplies (while they are apparenrly OEM TJ Rubi sensors manufactured by Honeywell), for some reason do not hold up all that well. So I choose the setup that retains the speedo gear. With JB's special custom yoke he supplies, you're still netting something like 0.75" extra driveshaft length over the entire standard SYE market. So that's good enough for me.

When I ran the 2.5" RC lift, I found an SYE was much more ideal than a transfer case drop. I couldn't get my angles right even at 2.5". Not to mention the extra strength it provides, and how on a YJ it eliminates the leakage out of the back of the transfer case if the driveshaft comes out of the case. Just overall a small list of nice improvements make that setup a good permanent choice for me. I found the Transfer case drop to be a bandaid, and without either the driveshaft angles were way too steep so that wasn't an option for me either.
 
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