2.5" Daystar kit is ordered....

[SurfGuitar141]

Placed the order on Monday, hoping to see it on my front porch some time next week.
Got a buddy I work with at the Fire Dept that has his own garage, and knows how to do suspension lifts, got his own spring compressor too. The only thing he can't do is the re-alignment, but I'll get the guy that installed my General Grabbers to do that part.

I plan to retain the clevis lift which should give me 3" up front to help level it out with the 2.5" rear lift. This kit includes the replacement front stabilizer bushings.

From what I've been reading about lifts on this forum and others, I shouldn't need to replace the upper arms, or have to extend the brake lines, but if the brake lines look like they might get stressed, stretched, or rub, I'll forget the clevis part, and just go with the 2.5" the Daystar kit will give me.

I'll try and remember to bring my camera and take some shots of the work in progress, and of course the after photos......

 

[SurfGuitar141]

Holy Crap That was Fast......

Ordered on Monday, got an e-mail yesterday informing me the item was shipped, on my front porch today.......(woot)eek2dance.gif(woot)

The hard part is arranging a day when my buddy (that's going to help me through this) and I are both off. One of my Fire Dept cohorts has access to a garage with a lift, and a spring compressor, but he's on a different shift than me, so finding a day we both can do it will be a slight challenge, especially since we both work side jobs as well......

If I had my way we'd be doing it tonight.....

 

[mag03kj]

Jack stands and rent a spring press and you can do it yourself!

 

[SurfGuitar141]

Jack stands and rent a spring press and you can do it yourself!

I got the jack stands, and if I can't get it together with my buddy, I think I know where I can get my hands on a spring compressor...

The only thing that may throw me a curve is this kit requires me to remove the stud bolts from the stock top plate, and re-mount them in the new Daystar top plates. The instructions say to use some sort of press to back them out....???
Don't know if I can reuse the stock top plates, or if I can somehow knock the studs out without doing any damage to them.
Beyond that this job is something I'm pretty comfortable handling on my own......

 

[twack]

big hammer works great for those studs

 

[SurfGuitar141]

big hammer works great for those studs

I was thinking I could brace them, put the nuts on level with the studs, and whack them out with a heavy hammer, then beat them into the new plates over a deep socket......????

Also found spring compressors on sale at Harbor Freight for 10 bucks.....wonder if they're good enough to do one lift......???

 

[ridenby]

I was thinking I could brace them, put the nuts on level with the studs, and whack them out with a heavy hammer, then beat them into the new plates over a deep socket......????

Also found spring compressors on sale at Harbor Freight for 10 bucks.....wonder if they're good enough to do one lift......???

Think I would look into finding a shop to compress springs for me.

 

[tommudd]

Go ahead with the 10 dollar compressors,
your wife will love spending the insurance money after you're dead!
Or should I send pictures of my buddy who laid for 5 years as a vegetable from a spring taking half his face off?

 

[linewarbr]

Wow mudd, really? Did that seriously happen?

 

[twack]

ya just rent a spring compressor from autozone and call it a day

 

[tjkj2002]

You need to extend the rear brake line(s).You also will need longer rear shocks,since you need longer rears it is a really good time to put in new(IE better) shocks in the front also.


Your playing with fire if you do not extend your rear brake line(s) with any lift over 2" on a KJ.The one thing no one ever thinks about and one of the most important things to save your life and others.

 

[SurfGuitar141]

Go ahead with the 10 dollar compressors,
your wife will love spending the insurance money after you're dead!
Or should I send pictures of my buddy who laid for 5 years as a vegetable from a spring taking half his face off?

The comment about the ten dollar spring compressor from Harbor Freight was intended to be "tounge in Cheek" ..... I hold very little faith in anything from that establishment.

One of my associates in the Fire Dept has a good quality set of spring compressors that he will be lending me, he has used them to lift several Jeeps and pickups with out fail....

I'll be taking this project on this coming Saturday, I'll post a few photo's and my results after the deed is done......

 

[ridenby]

The comment about the ten dollar spring compressor from Harbor Freight was intended to be "tounge in Cheek" ..... I hold very little faith in anything from that establishment.

One of my associates in the Fire Dept has a good quality set of spring compressors that he will be lending me, he has used them to lift several Jeeps and pickups with out fail....

I'll be taking this project on this coming Saturday, I'll post a few photo's and my results after the deed is done......

The front springs on Libby are a little stouter than fronts on a XJ or Wrangler.

 

[tjkj2002]

The comment about the ten dollar spring compressor from Harbor Freight was intended to be "tounge in Cheek" ..... I hold very little faith in anything from that establishment.

One of my associates in the Fire Dept has a good quality set of spring compressors that he will be lending me, he has used them to lift several Jeeps and pickups with out fail....

I'll be taking this project on this coming Saturday, I'll post a few photo's and my results after the deed is done......

99% of all spring compressor,portable ones and not the wall/stand mounted type, will not work on the KJ's front coils.

 

[jnaut]

99% of all spring compressor,portable ones and not the wall/stand mounted type, will not work on the KJ's front coils.

Can you give a brand or type that's recommended?

 

[Jeepin05]

Yep, the $10 compressors from Harbor Freight barely worked on the Rear Springs on my KJ, and they are much more open than the front. Do not mess around with the front and take the assemblies to a shot to decompress/recompress with the top plates.

I can almost guarantee that you wont be able to put the $10 ones on the front assembly, as they use these hook type teeth that have to get in between the coils.

 

[SurfGuitar141]

worked for this guy, he didn't see a need to haul everything to a shop and pay to have them do the work.....

http://http://www.lostjeeps.com/forum/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=26190&start=0

 

[tommudd]

You can use some of them BUT ...................
well never mind you seem to have your mind made up
I tried telling someone else about them also but he insisted until the compressors spun around and wanted me to remove them

 

[J-Thompson]

my advice FWIW
do not use those cheep screw type compressors on KJ front coils
they are not happy with TJ coils ,which are not as hard to compress
and you dont have to compress them much

save your self a lot of head aches and pay a shop $50 to do it
easiest thing to do is talk to a small mom and pop shop
offer up $50 cash at the close of business one day
I had an entire OME/Rancho set up installed on our KJ for $150 cash

 

[SurfGuitar141]

This afternoon I started to do my Daystar lift, and here's how it's going so far....

Started with the fronts since they are the most difficult and time consuming. The first mistake I made was leaving my windows down, not thinking that I had to remove the battery to access the left side top plate mounting studs. Rectified that issue with jumper cables.....

Beyond that the process went rather smoothly as far as removing both front strut assemblies, although the nuts on the upper ball joints were a bit reluctant to come off, they were replaced on a factory recall by the local dealership about two years ago, and it looks like they put some type of thread dope on them, took more effort than it should have to turn them off.

Now we get to the ugly part.....I have received fair warning from a couple of you here to take the strut assemblies to a shop and have them done on a floor mounted shop compressor, but being the hard head that I'am, I got my hands on a very well made and heavy duty screw type, and tried to do it myself anyway. With the springs at about half the compression needed to up bolt the strut, the threaded rod started to bow, and I mean bow....
I saw stress on this tool that just didn't instill any confidence in me at all, stopped what I was doing, unbolted the compressor, got on the phone to a local shop, and the owner will allow me to use his floor mounted hydrolic compressor tomorrow morning.
The words of warning from Tommudd, tjkj2002, and others stuck with me while attempting to compress this strut assembly, I thank you all for your honest appraisal of doing these struts with the wrong tool, and I could easily see how someone could get seriously injured if that device decided to fail under full compression.
My apologies to all for not believing your words of warning from the start....

Hopefully the thunderstorms will hold off long enough for me to finish this project tomorrow, the rest of the story and photo's when the job is done.....