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-   -   JK - AEV 3.5" lift (https://www.ausjeepoffroad.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97272)

JasperJ 03-07-2010 03:22 PM

JK - AEV 3.5" lift
 

Well, I spent the last weekend installing the AEV 3.5” lift.

Why AEV and not Poly Performance?

I had some definite ideas on what I wanted from the lift. For me it was narrowed down to these two on both the performance and completeness. What swayed me towards the AEV lift was that in my mind from my research was that the Poly Performance lifts were more hardcore off-road orientated and the AEV was more of a touring set up albeit very capable off-road. As most of what my wife and I use the Jeep for is getting to the places we want to be away from the city life and not so much of the hardcore mud slog fest.

I had seen many reviews of the AEV’s on-road manners many of which also espoused the lifts performance off-road. Whereas the Poly’s reviews were focused off-road so it was hard to get a consistent view of how the Poly was on-road. I spoke to both Bill at DBOR and to Jeepkonection about the respective products and was really impressed by the potential of both. Another deciding factor was I wanted a complete lift, not something cobbled together. While Bill was adamant that he would have a package available when it was time for me to pull the trigger on a purchase the RHD as a kit was not a mature product whereas the AEV kit was already in the market place. The last factor for me was it had to be totally reversible without welding, grinding and cutting off the OEM components.

I have seen a couple of reviews on here where people had said that brackets on the AEV lift had bent but as I’ve said earlier I believe they may have bought the wrong kit for what they were after. They should have been looking more toward something like the Poly lift.
Realistically for me I know that my Jeep spends 80-90% of its life on the road, with the odd weekend foray onto the dirt/ beach or as a base vehicle to get us to the camp sites we like.

My set-up before the lift was 2008 CRD Unlimited manual with a Warn Rockcrawler front bar, winch hoop, winch plate, beam blocker and a T-Max 10 000 lb winch with wire rope. The Jeep also has stock rear bar and factory wheels and tyres, for the moment. The set-up adds 110kg (38 kg for the winch and 72 kg for the bar) to the nose of the Jeep and saw the stock springs sag so that the Jeep was running on the bump stops. A set of Rubicon Express 1 ¾” spacers saw the Jeep returned to level. This set up worked for a year although when I started the lift it was obvious that the suspension had consistently bottomed out on the bump stops.

I took measurements from the top of the centre cap of each wheel vertically to the guard. This eliminated any difference that tyre pressure had on the outcome. The measurements before were:
· F/L 490 mm
· F/R 485 mm
· R/L 505 mm
· R/R 495 mm
If you had looked into the AEV lift you would be aware the AEV 3.5” is supposed to give 4” to the front and 3” to the rear giving an average of 3.5”, from what I’ve read there is a settling period where the spring take a while to get to their set ride height. During the lift I removed the 1 ¾” spacers from the front spring tower and have put those aside for the time being, otherwise the Jeep would end up running around like a pre-runner. I measured again a week after the lift to give a little settling in time.
· F/L 585 mm
· F/R 580 mm
· R/L 595 mm
· R/R 585 mm
So, so far the lift has netted 95 mm up front and 90 mm at the rear. I put this down to the removal of the 44.45 mm (1 ¾”) spacers and the stock rear bar.

Other measurements that people may find helpful:
· Overall height 1940 mm
· To the top of the headlight 1100 mm (Qld limits headlights to 1400 mm)
· Fuel tank clearance 360 mm
· To the front trailing arm drop bracket 310 mm.

Before and after photos all photos were taken from the tripod at the same reference height

Front

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...eforefront.jpghttp://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...Afterfront.jpg


Rear

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...Beforerear.jpghttp://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17..._Afterrear.jpg


Front Wheel
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...frontwheel.jpghttp://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...frontwheel.jpg
Rear Wheel
http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...erearwheel.jpghttp://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...rrearwheel.jpg

Springs

Front

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...ontsprings.jpg

Rear

http://i5.photobucket.com/albums/y17...earsprings.jpg

Gotchas. While the kit itself is well put together and anyone who can loosen and tighten a nut can install the lift there are a couple of things that you need to be aware of. JK Wranglers simply are just not built straight, there is a lot of tolerance built into the components, plus the stock brackets may be bent and slow you down when installing the lift. Specifically I noted:

· The factory front panhard rod and lower sway bar mounting point up front; they were installed out of alignment and required a little persuasion to enable the AEV brackets to fit as designed.

·
My rear bumpstop pads had been bent downward(by me I think as I can remember one bone jarring hit on the back end) and they needed to be adjusted to get the lock nuts for the bumpstop extensions on under the rear bumpstop pads.

·
When removing the upper drivers side control arm you need to either remove the exhaust or cut the upper mounting bolt and replace this as you won’t get it out when changing the arms to aftermarket or installing the drop brackets. There is not enough clearance to get it out. This is really only an issue caused by the production line assembly as the chassis and suspension are put together before the engine is fitted. So make sure you buy a replacement bolt before hand.

·
You need to make sure you have a Torque wrench, as the instructions for the kit say “too tight is just not right” but also tight is not right either. A couple of days after driving around the Jeep started handling poorly in corners, I had done up the bejezzus out of the front panhard rod but failed to torque it up while visually it looked ok to get it to the 125 ft lbs required was another two full turns on the bolt (I suspect it had gradually worked loose, because it was handling fine to start with). How many times has it been said that it all has to be done up properly? I agree.

·
You need a ratchet strap to help with the alignment of bolt holes when reassembling components.

·
There was one component I was not happy with in the install and that was the bolt used to join the two brackets that make up the panhard rod/ steering stabiliser bracket. It’s too short, during my aircraft trade training I was taught that buts need to have three threads protruding from them, this one doesn’t even come all of the way through, so that will be changed out in quick order for one of the correct length.
· Back on torque for bolts, the AEV instructions do not tell you the factory torques for the components make sure you get a hold of these and list them down before you start it will save you running up and down the stairs during the process.

·
For the rear end install the rear bumpstop extensions after re-torque the trailing arms as you won’t get clear access to the bolt to torque it.

·
For mine the panhard rod in its new location does not correctly re-centre the rear end, this could be because it hasn’t fully settled in yet but with stock offset wheels the right rear tyre will rub the swaybar during droop. Not much but enough to notice.

·
The rear springs do not remain seated under full articulation, the shocks have more than enough length to unseat the springs, this may lead to lose of the rubber isolator down the track. There are a couple of solutions to this, 1) buy longer springs, not an option for me as I bought the set up for it’s manners, changing the spring will change that. 2) limit the travel through limit strap or a spring retainer kit. There are a few around which only do the bottom mounts (you’d still lose the isolator) and there is the Currie Enterprises one which retains the top and bottom. I think I will go this route.

One thing I didn’t like so much was the loss of my Teraflex swaybar disconnects, they won’t work with the AEV lift as you can’t get them off of the lower pins. I looked at a couple of options there and ended up getting the Teraflex S/T swaybar disconnect system. These are on run-out on the Teraflex site as they are bringing a new one out with forged arms, so instead of paying US$600 I got it for US$300, they still have them on their site for that money. I couldn’t pass it up at that price. I had considered the Currie anti-rock but was turned off by the degradation of the on-road ride. I haven’t installed this yet as I don’t weld and I’m having a couple of nuts turned into flag nuts as I don’t want to pull my front bar off again, lazy I know, but I also know how heavy that bitch is. I’ll do a write up on that once I put it on.
So am I happy with the lift, yep. I haven’t had a chance to really work it off-road, I just did some light stuff the other day and it seemed to work well for what I wanted. As this is my DD I needed it to have really nice road manners and yes they are exceptional. The Jeep is sitting around 4” higher than stock (my wife falls out now, that’s some funny shit!) and it doesn’t drive like it. No boat like handling, no more body roll than stock. I don’t get as much head bobble as the suspension soaks up the bumps really nicely. I’m still getting used to the ride but overall I like it. I can recall a couple of others not liking the firm rear end without any weight in it, but in reality it is not that harsh. I know SJS (Steve) had some issues with corrugations out West, but I felt the stock suspension exhibited the same tendencies of being really twitchy over the same track. I’ll remeasure the lift in another couple of weeks to see how it has settled in.

I know this is a long post but I feel happy with the kit and if I can make someone else's decision on which lift easier all the better

Jas

Yom 03-07-2010 04:12 PM

good to hear you're happy with it.

I agree, i doubt anyone will find a way to stop the JK's arse end from being twitchy without major changes. I have been told as for the ride the AEV kit doesn't improve things, there's bugger all uptravel with those shocks and panhard bracket. Mind you, most monotubes seem to have the issue of having poor compression/extension.

Mud'N'Guts 03-07-2010 04:15 PM

What lift does Yom recommend, if the AEV kit doesn't improve the ride?

Yom 03-07-2010 04:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mud'N'Guts (Post 1093676)
What lift does Yom recommend, if the AEV kit doesn't improve the ride?

Whatever coils you want, teamed with adjustable shocks. There is no other way to get a ride which can be fine tuned to suit whatever you're doing (which is the problem, there's no one setup which is perfect for everything, only compromises).

Mud'N'Guts 03-07-2010 04:28 PM

Ok, so disregarding shocks, what is your opinion on the AEV kit? Good, bad, miracle, mediocre?

Yom 03-07-2010 05:24 PM

my opinion is only valid for me, it is not valid for others due to their preferences.

I don't like how little uptravel it has particularly in the rear (this is partially also a result of the lifted panhard bracket). Everything else appears to be perfectly suited to the sort of customer use they've aimed it towards. Another 4dr it is fitted to here in brissy works quite well with it offroad and I assume so onroad. Likewise I have seen a JK 4dr with a mix of Polyperformance coils/shocks and AEV relocation brackets doing its thang and it works quite well offroad too and I believe the owner is very pleased with it onroad and considers it to be leagues ahead of his previous Old Man Emu setup.

litestorm 03-07-2010 05:37 PM

thanks for the write up, i'm researching that same kit for my JK
just need someone in Melbourne down south who can install it
with some 35" tires to match

m


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