Most guys who posted are right. I had an extensive talk with AEV today and they told me it was the 1" spacers that are causing the problem. The drop brackets were designed for their 4.5" lift kit and no higher. Right now with stock bumpers (No Additional weight) and the 1" coil spacer I am sitting 1.5" higher than the kit was designed for (They assume heavy bumpers). I am basically outside the envelope with the lift. Obviously the wide tires dont help but its the spacers per them. I am going to take the spacers out and use a 1" body lift for now and then re align for the third time with the caster at 4.2-4.5. No one at Off road evolution said anything. Maybe its because they usually dont deal with this lift and didnt know, but I basically did my own research and HOPEFULLY have resolved the problem. I dont know what they caster is at now, I never got a print out. Hopefully this will put the handling issues to bed!!!!!!!

 

funny, i just was at off road evolution and asked them about your jeep and was told that you came in with ZERO caster and that they installed a set of teraflex lower control arms to set your caster to what it should be. i find it interesting that you never mentioned this in your original post or even above in your last post. yes, the AEV kit is NOT adjustable and given the amount of height you have, you would have been outside of their envelope but, with a set of adjustable control arms, that envelope would have been extended and, from what i understand, it was.

 

Not sure what your trying to imply here? I had absolutley no clue what the caster was at when I brought it in, I dont know these suspensions that well and never got a print out from the first hack shop that did the work. It drove 85% better when I left ORE, but the thing is still unpredictable in the corners and doesnt handle right. The thing still handles like shit. If it was such common knowledge for any experienced shop I would think that I would have been told by someone this could have been part of the problem? I have nothing against ORE and think they are a top notch shop and will give them my business again. After talking with AEV today they said it was pretty simple to figure out it was the spacers. I went out of my way to say the ORE probably doesnt have much experience with a lower end kit like this, so I am not sure how your misconstruing that this was some personal attack on ORE????

 

LOL!! no need to get all excited and i'm not trying to imply anything. i simply stated i found it interesting that you never mentioned what if anything ORE did to address the issues you were experiencing. you said that "no one at Off road evolution said anything" and, i just had a hard time believing that you would just give someone money for parts and to do work on your jeep without anyone telling you what they were for. but hey, i wasn't there and maybe you're just that kind of guy.

i am glad to hear that ORE was able to get your jeep 85% better than when you brought it in to them and, i hope that you took the time to tell AEV what was done as well as it would have made a difference.

last but not least, i see that you used to be or still are a vet guy. i also see that you're running very large mud grapplers and just wanted to make sure you knew that tires like this, ones with large voids at the shoulder will not handle as well as street tires especially in corners. i'm not trying to imply that you wouldn't know this but, just in case, i thought i would put it out there.

peace

 

The reason why i didnt mention ORE is because I didnt want to make them look bad if there was still a problem after leaving their shop. Of course we went over everything in detail and I knew exactly why we were doing what we were. Its been getting progressivley worse as I have been driving it (Caster seems out again) so thats why I called AEV today and they gave me this new info. Mel did say "lets try this first". I just didnt want to throw their name out there and have someone speculate why its still not right. I also uunderstood quite well going in that my choice of tire would have some negative effects as well. I have had 5 or 6 lifted chevys/Dodge's with these tires so I know the characteristics. I will be going back to ORE in the future. I assumed the control arms would take care of the problem but they didnt. Now its on to phase 2. I should have just kept the terra 6" Long Arm with Elkas I had sitting in my garage for my 11.

 

Get the alignment specs from AEV. Remove the spacers and set the alignment to their specs. If you still have an issue it's likely your tires. Aggressive mud tires handle like crap. A Ferrari on mud tires will handle like crap.

 

a speed related shimmy is almost always a tire balancing problem. if you're feeling like you're all over the place, you most likely have too little or no positive caster. adjustable control arms will help you to add more positive caster and that should help to address this problem.

got it, i apologize for the confusion.

 

yup, the americas tire by me can road force balance up to a 40" tire. or, so they tell me. ever since we started running toyo's, i haven't had to balance any of my tires. just install on my beadlocks and go.