my 96 laredo

[96_zjlarado]

Been cruisin around on here for a while so i figured now that i finally did something major to my zj, I'd post up some pics.

When it had 2"bb and 31x10.5's

Took some poser shots with the stock suspension. Actually did a lot better than i thought it would. Still wasn't unloading the left rear spring in the pics. Probably could have done one more tire. :-X





Ok, now for the goods.....
Got it in the garadge and on the jackstands.

and got the axles out from under it!


Moved the charcoal canister from in the fender well to a temporary location until i can find somewhere else for it.

Trimmed out the inner fenderwells to make room for the 35's after I moved the charcoal canister.


Lift showed up after waiting on it an extra week due to Clayton's tow rig grenading a tranny on the way back from Moab Easter weekend.

Front high clearance axle bracket kit and front long arms

Rear high clearance axle bracket kit and rear upper and lower arms

New BEEFY crossmember to replace my "tin" factory crossmember

holy stickers batman!!! sent me a stack of them! one of them is gonna have to go on Hailey's Barbie powerwheels jeep

lazer cut goodness

old and new front and rear springs. front on the left, rear on the right

Got my new rubbers finally! 35x12.5 R15 Cooper Discoverer STT (almost identical to the Toyo open country mt but alot cheaper) and new 15x10 wheels.


Got the new crossmember in.

Welding the truss and all the other brackets onto the 9"

All finished up


some floorjack flexin. 8-) this thing is going to have sooooo much droop. if i had jackstands that were about a foot taller, i'm sure the axle could have dropped about another 5-10 inches.


axle sitting on jackstands with springs in place. needs to jack the axle up about another 4-5 inches before i can mount the tire.

[96_zjlarado]

got some D60 caliper brackets that use chevy D44 calipers and had to grind them out a little to make it fit the axle tube. It uses the front ford D44 rotor and a chevy 3/4 ton caliper. doesn't have much clearance behind the 15" wheels.... about 1/4"
sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.



it will be easy to bleed the rear brakes

rotor pretty much fills up the entire rim. talk about a brake upgrade. [/quote]

[96_zjlarado]

here's a few pics of it all done.

I need to do some trimming




it was a long way up for my short @$$


made it home safe and sound. talk about a shake down run.

[jfowlzj95]

Damn thats looking great! Makes me want to stop being a lazy ass and get my junk built. What did you get your axles out of? That 9" doesnt look to be that much offset.

[nierace]

Very nice sweet ZJ...but wheres your spare tire ?

[96_zjlarado]

Damn thats looking great! Makes me want to stop being a lazy ass and get my junk built. What did you get your axles out of? That 9" doesnt look to be that much offset.

came out of late 70's f150 or full size bronco. it's 66" WMS to WMS. 30 spline shafts.

[96_zjlarado]

Very nice sweet ZJ...but wheres your spare tire ?

good question........ still trying to figure out where i'm gonna put it and how i'm gonna pay for one.

[SOLITUDE]

Very nice build. Love the caliper idea. Questions about the 44:
HP? Did it come with the cast-in radius arms? Lets see some shots of the front suspension.

[zj95maxx]

Looks great, How high doyou think you are with those high clearance brackets?

[96_zjlarado]

sorry it's taken me a while to reply.
the front is a hp44. the original one i picked up had the cast radius arm wedges, but the guy that sold them to me was nice enough to let me bring it back for another one with the welded on wedges. I'll post up some pics when i get home. no pics on the work computer.

the high clearance brackets are awsome. the bottom of the axle tube is about 15" from the ground and the brackets are about a half inch above that. haven't scraped them on anything yet. the spring buckets only sit about 1/2" higher than the factory spring buckets on the d30/d35, but with the plastic spring pad/isolator it puts it up another 1/2". I'd say i got about 8" of lift overall.

[SOLITUDE]

update?

[ELLLLLIOTTTTT]

what is a larado?

[04WJfreedom]

Looking good, nice job.

[N/Angel]

looks great!! what wheels are those and where did you get them? they look like american racing wheels...

[Strada]

That´s a sweet ZJ!!!

[SOLITUDE]

please elaborate on the brakes you went with.... I'm wanna do the same swap on my 9". I want to run a front caliper on the rear.

[jfowlzj95]

please elaborate on the brakes you went with.... I'm wanna do the same swap on my 9". I want to run a front caliper on the rear.

Looks like he just used some D60 weld on caliper brackets (probably from BTF or Ballistic), ground them out to fit the 9", and used D44 rotors and calipers... what else is there to know?

[midwestxj]

got some D60 caliper brackets that use chevy D44 calipers and had to grind them out a little to make it fit the axle tube. It uses the front ford D44 rotor and a chevy 3/4 ton caliper. doesn't have much clearance behind the 15" wheels.... about 1/4"
sorry for the crappy cell phone pics.

This is exactly what he did.

[SOLITUDE]

I wanna know what he kind of spacer he used to hold the shafts in because after you remove the stock drum backing plate you need a spacer. Ballistics sells a spacer too?

Thanks for mentioning ballistics.... found them. Still having trouble with the spacer.
http://www.ballisticfabrication.com/...p_27-1438.html

[96_zjlarado]

what is a larado?

somone on a different forum already used 96zjlaredo and other versions, so i just decided to spell it wrong and now i'm so used to doing it when i log on, i seem to spell it wrong ALL the time.

[96_zjlarado]

I wanna know what he kind of spacer he used to hold the shafts in because after you remove the stock drum backing plate you need a spacer. Ballistics sells a spacer too?

Thanks for mentioning ballistics.... found them. Still having trouble with the spacer.
http://www.ballisticfabrication.com/...p_27-1438.html

just did it the el cheapo way and cut the centers out of the drum backing plate the same shape as the axle flange. problem solved.

[96_zjlarado]

looks great!! what wheels are those and where did you get them? they look like american racing wheels...

Thanks! they're Unique (same company as cragar) series 42 15x10 with 4" back space.

[96_zjlarado]

no new updates to the zj yet. just been wheelin it and tryin not to break anything. i've put my rock rails through their paces the past couple weeks though. very very VERY good investment! funny part is that i think i only hit them 1 time when i only had 31's and now i seem to smack the hell out of them all the time. probably doesn't help that i try to crawl over rocks the size of a civic now. Naaaaaa.....
anyway, trying to sell my car so that i can buy a more expensive car so that i won't have any money to put into the zj.... well, that's not the real reason, but it's the truth. i haven't had a car payment in 7 years and i'm not looking forward to having one again. especially one that's 550 bucks a month. oh well. gotta pay to play right?

[SOLITUDE]

I've never seen Clayton's rear high clearance upper shock mounts installed. Can you take a pic?

[96_zjlarado]

sure can. I'll be able to do it tomorrow morning when i get off of work. if i remember, but i'll try.