I bought this Jeep a couple of weeks ago to fill the hole left when I traded my last Wrangler in on my truck. This trade was due to health issues, and had to be done, but I wanted a Jeep. I looked at older FSJs, but decided a project was just not in th cards, so I started looking at newer Grand Cherokees for comfort, room, and decent off road performance.
Due to the fact that I am a large person, I needed all the interior room I could get, and I wanted a straight axle, so it seemed like a WJ might fill the bill. We were lucky enough to find a local, one owner 02 with 79,000 miles. It was a somewhat rare Sport Model that came with a 4 liter and a 242 transfer case - a real plus for me. In addition, the sport has leather and other options that come on a Limited, but not the V8 and the auto transfer case. For me it seemed almost perfect.
These pictures show the Jeep mostly as we received it. We have only run it through the car wash. It was a very clean used Jeep!
I bought this WJ knowing nothing about this series of GC. What I found out after the purchase was that the WJ is harder to put big tires on than a ZJ - the fender openings are just not as big...... That was not a huge issue with me, but it does complicate the selection of tires and wheels.
The other issue with a WJ is aftermarket wheels, or lack thereof. The WJ was the first of the newer Jeeps to have a 5 on 5 bolt pattern with a 16 or 17 inch wheel, depending on year and option package. They also have 6 inch backspacing. This really limits the choices you have for wheels to "newer" type designs.....dubz.....
There are some steel wheels and cast aluminum available, but most of the aluminum wheels have 4" backspacing. This was going to result in the tire sidewall sticking out about 3 inches from the stock location. This was really more than I wanted and it would add to the clearance issues when turning.
I set some criteria for the lift and tires as follows:
Minimize the amount of money needed for the lift.
Choose a tire size that did not require a huge lift or a lot of cutting.
Choose a wheel that looked good, but did not stick out a long way and met the cost criteria.
Buy an all terrain type tire.
By paying attention to the last three, the first would follow.
I am partial to a narrow tire, so my first choice was a 235/85-16. This tire is almost 32 inches tall and would require about 3 inches of lift with some cutting for clearance....not exactly what I was looking for.
My next thought was a 265/70-16 which was shorter but wider. Like I said, I wanted a narrow tire, so this was less than desirable.
So I settled on a 245/75-16 which is shorter than the 235/85 and more narrow than the 265/70.
The other concern was wheel width and backspacing. Most of the aftermarket wheels were either 7 or 8 inches wide with 4 or 5 inches of backspacing. As I stated earlier, I did not want the tires to stick out much and did not want to cut much. Less backspacing would require more cutting. I decided to stick with the stock wheels due to these issues. They don't look as good, but they sure do cost less, which was the first requirement of the project.
And for the lift, I chose a RE 2" BB. This is an inexpensive lift that included spacers, shocks, bumpstops, and the shock thingies required when installing aftermarket shocks on a WJ. Very complete, good quality, and not a lot of money. I ordered it from AllJeep and the service was great with a great price.
So how did it come out........?
The lift resulted in a change in the distance from the hub to the fender lip of 1 3/4 inches....that is what most 2" BBs provide from what I have read.
Including the tire, the fender lip is now 3" taller than stock.
I have not severely tested this setup yet, but I did do some "suburban wheeling" behind Quizno's.......I exited the parking lot in the back into the next business parking lot. There was a curb on top of a 18" rise, which I kind quartered over to see if I got any rubs when stuffed...kind of.......LOL! No issues at all. I also tried some steep driveways with the wheels turned hard and no issues. I think it will work pretty good for a DD that is does some mild off roading.
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