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Help with ordering 6.5" lift,whats the best


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Its time for me to order the lift i want for my MJ and i want some opinions from you guys that have a 6.5" lift. I only want to do this once with everything to do it right.I want to run 33 or 34 inch tires and i want to be able to drive down the road and go off when i want . The rear is simple,i'm doing a dana44 spring over and have several options to raise or lower the rear end a little to match the front if i have to. Mainly its the front i want help with. Give me some food for thought!

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most will say go longarms with a 6.5in lift. i have short arms and it just fine. for arms, you will want to go with an adjustable one, something like a rubicon express. and if you are getting rubi express arms, you might as well and get the coils from them as well. you will need to address the trac-bar, shocks, brake lines and drag link also. thats my 2 cents

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i have short arms with drop brackets and it rides great and flexes awesome. but you can get a RockKrawler Longarm kit for the same price i bet. New Vs New anyways. I bought most of my stuff used.

 

this is my shortarm flexin. pretty good if you ask me. heck pretty good if you ask anyone. I have not lifted a tire yet in the front. (although i have only had it out twice.)

 

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Copy/Pasted from a previous post on here in regards to the 6.5" height.

 

Longarms have nothing to do with what type of wheeling you do. Better flex is just a by-product of having them. At that height (6.5") your control arm angle's are just way to steep and the ride will suffer greatly. Additionally if you ever try to go over anything, your jeep will be pushing itself over the axle, not pushing the axle forward with it. Having your control arms at that angle (short-arms) at that height your putting more abuse on your uni-body and just asking for trouble down the road.

 

Also at the height of 6.5" you need to address things like the steering. Flex out your stock steering at that height and it's going to bind. You'll have several issues with the steering at that height if you keep it stock. We've addressed that with our kit (include a cross-over setup). Our steering setup is 100% bolt on and can be installed in less than 30 minutes.

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Its time for me to order the lift i want for my MJ and i want some opinions from you guys that have a 6.5" lift. ..............................................................................................................Give me some food for thought!

 

I quoted this because looking at this thread through the day, it appears that no one with a 6.5" lift installed on their rig has offered his/her opinions. We had 6", an uninstalled 6.5", a vender pointing him to his site, and then the ole, let's slip back into the long arm, short arm, and drop bracket debate. Now I don't mean to highjack this thread, or pissoff those that have posted, but give the guy what he asked for, opinions of a 6.5" lift that you are running. Here is the thread that Motion copy and pasted from, which again was asking for help with a 6.5" lift decision. http://www.comancheclub.com/forums/view ... sc&start=0

 

You can come back and flame me but I'm only telling it like I see it.

 

 

:cheers:

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no offense but short arms are a good alternative if longarms get out of the budget. I wouldnt want a short arm kit without the drop brackets for sure. I had mine without the drop brackets first and did not like it. So flaming short arms isn't fair just because you don't sell them.

 

that being said i am at 6.5 ish with the stock steering. the steering setup that motion offroad has i have definetly been thinking about but so far i have not had issues with my steering. But i do plan on upgrading to something similiar. I have also looked at the JCR offroad settup but i think it is the exact same thing.

 

I would love to have long arms but cost was out of my budget. someday i will ahve them but for now i am very pleased with my short arm setup.

 

Ask CW he likes his shortarms with Drop brackets too. and that guy is hardcore shortarm!

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Well sell short arms, as well as drop brackets from 2 manufactures. Our 4.5" MJ kit uses short arms. So we're not stating our opinion based on those facts.

 

As stated above, 6.5" in our opinion is considered an extreme lift on the XJ/MJ. We stated above why we think that the longarms are the better alternative over a shortarm setup, or even a shortarm w/drop bracket setup.

 

As far as cost goes; price out a set of adjustable upper and lower control arms. For instance we'll just do a quality set of RE adjustables. UCA - $230 + LCA - $260 = $490. Now add a set of drop brackets to that; we'll go with the cheaper RC one's at $200. So now your at a total of $690. The RK longarm kit can be bought for $560. Even with JUST the short arms, I'd say spend the extra $70 to go to longarms...

 

I'm not looking to open the can of worms on the short arm vs. longarm debate. However coming from someone who has spent a lot of time around the XJ/MJ and wheeled both quite a bit I'm always going to say it's a better option to go with longarms at 6.5" than shortarms. And that statement is based NOT on just someone who wheels there rig. Sure you can run short arms at 6.5" and I know several who do. However in our opinion it's not the "best" thing to be doing.

 

 

As far as telling the OP what else is needed. I will offer this advice based on the vast amount of products we've used on our own rigs at this height.

 

Tracbar - Your going to want an adjustable one, and your going to want one that's heavy duty. The 3 I would even start to look at are the Rubicon Express HD one (RE1660), the TNT, and the RK one. All 3 of these come with a heavy duty mount as well. I'd probably 1st off tell you to throw the RK one out the window simply based on the fact that it uses a krawler joint on the one end and they tend to go bad fairly quickly. As far as the TNT vs. the RE I'm going to say go with the RE. Reasoning is based on a few things. The RE comes painted (both tracbar and bracket), the TNT does not. Not a huge deal but the finish on the RE is nice and tends to hold up well. The biggest thing is that the RE bracket allows you to run the RE brace later down the road if you want to (we recommend it). The TNT bracket does not allow you to run the RE brace and last I talked with Bob @ TNT (about a week ago) they do not plan on making one available anytime in the near future as they have to many other "more important" things to do.

 

Brake Lines - Get extended one's! At 6.5" you NEED them. Even if you don't think you do, you do! The brakelines are not something you want to "risk" tearing on the road or the trails. Just spend the money and get a good quality set of extended ones.

 

Steering - I've already addressed it a bit before, but at 6.5" you really should consider doing something with your steering. A crossover setup is really recomded. Their are several on the market. Some are 100% bolt on (like ours) and others require you to ream your knuckle's out (JCR). Prices range vastly on steering setups.

 

Tie Rod - I guess you could call this part of your steering. But with 6.5" your often running 33" or 35" tires. If you wheel at all your stock tierod will soon become a pretzel. Several options available once again. We like to pimp ours cause it's got the wrench flats on the ends thats nice for adjusting it. But you've got many other manufacture's make tierods for the XJ/MJ.

 

Bumpstops - Most kits leave this important part out. Not sure if it's simply overlooked or the manufactures think they really are not that important. Bumpstops allow you to maintain control of where the upward travel of your suspension stops and prevents over compression and premature wear to your springs. In our opinion they are a very important part of your suspension setup.

 

Coil Springs - You have many different options here. Different manufacture's offer different coil spring rates. Since your going with a SOA rear setup it's somewhat important to try to get as close to the same spring rate as your rear if you want your rig to perform well both on and off road. For instance you don't want to have a really flexy rear with your SOA and have a stiff front coil that does not flex well at all.

 

Quick Disco's - Get some! Many different options on the market. They really depend on what you want to spend and what your looking for in a set. We just recommend you keep your front swaybar connected for any street use; especially at this height.

 

Control Arms - We already talked about it above a little bit but I'll touch on them again for the fun of it. If you do go with short arms get a quality set of adjustables. The new thing on the market are the flex joint arms. RE makes a very nice set that they call the superflex arms. They have a rubber bushing at one end, and a flex joint at the other. They offer added flex and are a very well built product. As far as drop brackets go, both the RE and RC kits come with support braces. Neither setup (the support braces) will work on the MJ due to the MJ's different lower control arm mount. As stated above we recommend a longarm setup of some kind at this height.

 

 

We've tried/used a lot of different products at 6.5" on our MJ and we've built our kit based on what products we've been the most happy with and work well together. We've got a lot of RR time in putting our kit together. So above by stating what we did is based on those facts. Sorry if we came off the wrong way.

 

If you have any questions about what products work/don't work well together feel free to shoot us a PM, email, or give us a call. We're glad to help however we can.

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I have the 6.5 bds long arm and love it and it has a lifetimt waranty with it. you will need sye and new drive shafts also.Can you give me some more info on the bds? What all comes with it and cost. How does the jeep handle on and off road? Thanks
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Thanks motion offroad for the reply. I would rather spend the money now and go long arm than have to upgrade later down the road.Any more replies from guys that HAVE a 6.5 feel free to add their 2 cents. I'm really looking to find out how their jeep handles.

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i have a 6in lift with 33x10.5s. I think that it is the perfect height. I did very minimal trimming of the inner fender in the front and none in the rear. On road can get a little bumpy at times, but that is because i have short arms. Off road, it flexes out nice and it gets the job done for me.

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