Help improve my ride.

[VTbiker]

Hey, first time posting here. Had my JT for about a year. It’s a sport manual tranny with the teraflex 1.5 level kit and the mopar lift control arms with 285/70/17 tires. I’m looking to upgrade the ride. It’s fine on road, but I live a mile up a rough dirt road and frequently drive other poorly maintained dirt roads, especially since winter now presents multiple “mud seasons”. These conditions are super rough and annoying. I don’t off-road recreationally, but often run class IV roads and other fire/farm roads for back country snowboarding and mountain biking trail work etc. The rest of my driving is 35-50 mph rural roads, and occasionally short interstate sections. I’m considering the below options to improve the ride on rutted out dirt roads and off-road performance. Budget is $1500 right now.

-Currie antirock and bilstein 5100’s on stock sport coils
Or
-delete the level kit and add lift springs, better shocks, sway bar discos and an adjustable track bar.

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[RoamingGladiator]

First question before you change anything....

Whats your tire PSI at? You most certainly do not need sway bar disconnects for fire roads.

 

[Jefe1018]

First question before you change anything....

Whats your tire PSI at? You most certainly do not need sway bar disconnects for fire roads.

Honestly… all the suspension in the world won’t do a thing if your tires are stiff as a rock.

 

[High Alextude]

Hey, first time posting here. Had my JT for about a year. It’s a sport manual tranny with the teraflex 1.5 level kit and the mopar lift control arms with 285/70/17 tires. I’m looking to upgrade the ride. It’s fine on road, but I live a mile up a rough dirt road and frequently drive other poorly maintained dirt roads, especially since winter now presents multiple “mud seasons”. These conditions are super rough and annoying. I don’t off-road recreationally, but often run class IV roads and other fire/farm roads for back country snowboarding and mountain biking trail work etc. The rest of my driving is 35-50 mph rural roads, and occasionally short interstate sections. I’m considering the below options to improve the ride on rutted out dirt roads and off-road performance. Budget is $1500 right now.

-Currie antirock and bilstein 5100’s on stock sport coils
Or
-delete the level kit and add lift springs, better shocks, sway bar discos and an adjustable track bar.

Get the AEV kit with tuned bilsteins and geo brackets.

 

[RoamingGladiator]

Honestly… all the suspension in the world won’t do a thing if your tires are stiff as a rock.

100%. I have a 21 JTRD like yourself and I still have the stock suspension with a 1.5" Teraflex leveling kit, and it rides smooth with 37s at 30psi. The shocks on the 21 JT Rubicons are so bad, but it still rides very well on dirt roads at proper tire pressure.

If you want to bomb through a dirt road filled with potholes, you'll need to spend some serious money.

 

[kevman65]

You don't have to throw a bunch of parts and money at it.
What you're describing, you need better shocks and air out of your tires.

 

[PuddleJumper]

some bilsteins and drop some psi. call it a day.

 

[VTbiker]

Tires south of 40 psi. I should clarify a few things based on the comments - and thank you for them! It’s not much the jarring hits you would get from over inflated tires that I want to correct. It’s the swaying from all the ruts and potholes. I also don’t want to bomb fire roads, just smooth them out a bit. For context im comming off an XJ with 3” lift, discos and 32’s. It was manual but I swapped in axles from an auto tow package that had 3.73 so it was pretty capable. I did find having the sway bars disconnected was a huge help on rough roads at moderate speeds but I would agree I won’t need them for articulation in the terrain I encounter. This is why I am thinking about the antirock Hd/overland

 

[RoamingGladiator]

Tires south of 40 psi. I should clarify a few things based on the comments - and thank you for them! It’s not much the jarring hits you would get from over inflated tires that I want to correct. It’s the swaying from all the ruts and potholes. I also don’t want to bomb fire roads, just smooth them out a bit. For context im comming off an XJ with 3” lift, discos and 32’s. It was manual but I swapped in axles from an auto tow package that had 3.73 so it was pretty capable. I did find having the sway bars disconnected was a huge help on rough roads at moderate speeds but I would agree I won’t need them for articulation in the terrain I encounter. This is why I am thinking about the antirock Hd/overland

Lower those tires down to 30-32psi in my opinion and see how you feel... it should feel much more planted. If you find that sway bar disconnect is giving you a much better feel, those are some damn rough roads LOL.

Anti-Rocks are seriously awesome though, and I'd recommend them to anyone who wants a bit smoother articulation at speed. I would definitely try lowering your tire pressure closer to 30 and see how that feels. If that doesn't do it for you, your next step would be shocks in my opinion... though once you get into shocks, you need to think if you want to do a lift down the road. So you're not buying twice.

 

[VTbiker]

They are seriously rough roads. Small SUV’s like crv’s often get stuck or more frequently drag their belly during our prolonged mud season. It’s not uncommon to have to pull someone out to get bye. This isn’t my road but some of the higher backcountry ski spots that are single lane.
I doubt I will lift as these tires are as big as I want to run on stock gears.

 

[RoamingGladiator]

Sounds like tire pressure + shocks will do it for you. Bilstein 5100s are pretty popular around here.

 

[kevman65]

I went with the Rancho 9000 series to be able to play with adjustments to fine tune the ride.

If I like what I have, then I'll upgrade from there.

 

[Aleph]

If you want to bomb through a dirt road filled with potholes, you'll need to spend some serious money.

For someone who might be interested in spending some serious money to do this, what would that entail?

 

[kevman65]

For someone who might be interested in spending some serious money to do this, what would that entail?

Long arms and coil overs.

 

[RoamingGladiator]

For someone who might be interested in spending some serious money to do this, what would that entail?

You pretty much want to turn your Gladiator into a Mojave if you want to be able to hit some ruts at speed comfortably. One option that would be pretty cheap is if you could find a take-off Mojave suspension from someone who's upgraded... might be a cheap way to get close to Mojave-level suspension without actually being a Mojave.

It really all depends on the speed you're trying to go. The faster you want to hit ruts and not completely total your vehicle, the more you'll spend. Allegedly the Mojave has frame reinforcements from the factory... haven't seen any pictures of it yet. There are a few posts about people bending their frame at the rear shock/coil mount area from sending it a bit too hard.

EDIT: As Kevman above mentioned, if you want to build a prerunner like setup... you're doing a coil-over conversion.

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