Final Install Notes: Everything went together rather smoothly and quickly. We've had a lot of practice over this winter taking things apart and putting them back together. We made an attempt at aliening the front end as best we could with our limited knowledge. Our steering stops had to be set to accommodate the length of the steering stabilizer - it would bottom out or hit the differential. We'll have to change this in the future to allow for tighter turns. Bleeding the brakes took longer than expected.

First Test Drive: Our first test drive - Can you tell we're both a bit nervous?? At speeds below 20mph, we didn't have any drive line vibes. The brake peddle went down farther than we thought it should, but that's to be expected with brakes that are about 20% larger than stock (11" in diameter).

Death Wobble : So this is what they call Death Wobble?? Izzy was all over the road. To keep it going straight, you had to see-saw at the wheel.

Back in the garage, we made some changes in the alignment to see if that would help. No Luck. We removed the extended shackles and installed the shorter stock shackles - this helped a great deal, however, it's still not ideal for highway speeds. We've got more ideas up our sleeves to correct our CASTER problem.

Wilderness Rear Bumper & Tire Carrier: Installed our Wilderness Rear bumper and tire carrier. SWEET!

Gear Break In: Since Izzy was driving much better after installing the stock shackles, we couldn't resist to take it around town. We found a dirt parking lot so we could test the 4WD and the lockers. SWEET!! We won't do any real offroad testing until the drivability situation is fixed - atleast to make it safer on highway trips.

But until then......I'm just glad its back on the road!

Alignment: Had Izzy in at Buds Springs for an alignment. They couldn't do anything for us. Our Toe setting was within specs and our caster was 2.5 degrees on the left side and .75 degrees on the right side. The specs for Caster on a Wrangler is 6 degrees.

We're gonna do what?? Just when we got it all back together and started to enjoy the idea of wearing a hat because of the incredible sensation of being topless - we're going to take the front axle out (again) and take it to Way Cool Rod Shop and have them cut the knuckles off and reweld them at 6 degrees caster.

Personalized: Ok, so we couldn't resist the urge to personalize Izzy a bit. It was cheap and easy....so why not. At this point, I'll take anything that's cheap and easy.

We're back...... We currently have 6 degrees of caster and the infamous death wobble has totally gone away. However, in order to get rid of most of the bump steer issues, we put the stock shackles on.

CO2 Bottle ....I traded in my 15lb CO2 tank for a 10lb tank that fits nicely in this mount that I also bought from a fire extinguisher refill place. This mount it attached to the fenderwell and has a spring clip that holds it firmly in place during offroad trips.

GPS Mount.... This is a picture of our Garmin emap GPS mount using DualLock - can be found at Radio Shak. This stuff was also used to attach our CB on the underside of the dash! It hasn't moved yet!!! It's strong stuff!

Ahhh....."THE" switches.........

Time to go play......Bye Bye!