WTF-J

Remember what I said about planning?  In WTF-J Ver 0.1, I had the Rubicon Express Long Arm kit with the 5.5" lift that installed perfectly, but made for a very tall chassis.  Tall, as in my wife being arms folded positive that the WTF-J would be too tall to fit through our garage door.  A couple of quick measurements confirmed her guesstimate.

I knew about the AiRock system from an article in the Jeep mags from back in the ’03-’04 timeframe, and am a big fan in air suspensions, but had ruled it out due to complexity and expense.   (I had also briefely talked about it when spec’ing the frame with Jeremy at TDK, but he was more familiar (i.e. Comfortable/Confident) with the standard RE spring kits.  Being confronted with the garage door realities, I called Steve Stallboerger over at ORO to see what he could do.

The first challenge was that the AiRock was meant for more typical TJ axles, not D60′s.  Steve had done a D60 before, but he had questions.  He had me send a number of detailed pictures of the chassis and then we talked some more.  The decision was made to send me some basic parts and I would test-fit them to see whether it made sense to go forward. 

The good news is that I had gone with fairly wide axle spacing from MAD4WD and the parts fit.   ("Standards" in action.)   Steve included one of their "Emergency Kits" consisting of four Schraeder valves with 1/4" push on fittings, so I could rig some temporary lines to trial the suspension.  (Mounting them in a piece of 1.5" angle made for a slick manual Air Control Unit ("ACU") ) 

Everything worked perfectly,  but I sheared the Zerk fittings off of the Rear Upper Control arms when I dropped the frame to the lowest setting.  (I’m guessing that RE was counting on coil binding to keep that from happening.)  The other minor installation glitches were in the height sensors as I have the longer LJ control arms, but these were fixed with some all-thread and a Marriott Bic Pen that gave up its black body to serve as cover material.

Steve sold me on some slick QA1 shocks with integral upper/lower bump stops and also convinced me that it would be a good idea to go with the outboard shock mounts so that was a couple of days dedicated to cutting out the frame pockets and welding in the brackets. 

My biggest issue with the AiRock install was in mounting the in-cab controller.  The normative design is an aluminum pylon that mounts on top of the TJ dash.   CJ’s don’t really have any "dash mount" surfaces, so I talked Steve into milling the face so that I could mount it in the dash.  The in-dash configuration spawned a secondary problem as the dash mounted unit has a light sensor in the back that drives the brightness of the display.  I found an LED at Radio Shack that fit the sensor’s window perfectly and rigged a relay to turn it on with the ignition and off when the headlights turned on.

Now that it’s in, I can literally raise/lower the chassis ~11" at the push of a button which is a real luxury when you’re working underneath or under the hood.

Between the quality of the parts, the obvious thought that went into engineering the system, and the tech support during the pre-sales and installation period, ORO Rocks!