dragodog

Hope someone can help me brand new to this site.
First I am no mechanic but grew up on farm and have some basic wrench skills. My wife has a 2016 wrangler 2 door softtop willy wheeler. It is not a daily driver but a recreation / weekend vehicle. It has 8500 miles on it. I have put on a barricade 3/4 front winch bumper which added about 50 lbs over stock. Plan is to eventually mount a winch like I have on my truck. I am in process of installing steel fenders and will put on a rear steel bumper also. I know the steel bumpers will produce some sag so i wanted to maintain factory stance and have little stiffer suspension but did not want to run into all the issues with a lift, even a "level". So after doing some research i decided to just swap the factory coil springs on the jeep 14/55s with slightly stiffer 16/57s. I was looking for about a 1 inch lift. I did the switch and got 0.5 inch lift on front and 0.75-1.0 inch in rear. Drove for a few miles everything seemed ok just a little stiffer which i expected. Steering wheel even appeared to be centered still. I measured the axles and best I could tell they were still centered or close. I know they should have shifted some but with a tape measure they appeared to be within 1/16th inch of centered and can't do anything about that anyway without adding parts. So far so good. Then i went to front of jeep and looked at front. with the front driver side wheel straight (which i was doing to check the centering of the steering wheel) the front passenger side wheel is toed out...a lot. No measurement needed it is obvious visually. To the point I thought the jeep would have been pulling bad but it didn't. I didn't even think toe in/out was effected by lifts on JK especially below 2 inches. I followed the following procedure when i switched the springs using a jack and jack stands. Did front first then rear

• Jack up and support frame with jack stands supported axle with jack
• removed wheels
• removed track bar and sway bar link at axle
• removed lower shock mount
• removed brake line mount
• loosened upper and lower control arm mounts
• lower axle and swap coils
• lift axle to reinstall lower shock mount and brake lines
• install sway bar link
• reinstall tires
• lower jeep to ground full weight on suspension
• rock / bounce suspension
• reinstall track bar to axle and torque to spec
• retorque all control arms to spec
• repeat with rear except didn't remove sway bar link

So what the heck did i miss or do wrong. Plan on getting an alignment but can't figure this out. Axle and tie rods look fine. Can't imagine how they would have gotten bent anyway.
Any suggestions.
thanks

karls10jk

Pictures are worth a thousand words. Changing stock coils like that will not change your toe. I've swapped many sets on my own vehicle without adjusting the toe. You shouldn't expect those coils to maintain that "lift" for long, they'll sag like all other factory coils.

What do the front tires look like? If the toe has been off then you should see significant scuffing across the tread where basically the jeep has been plowing that tire down the road. Your adjustment for that is the tie rod- good luck adjusting it yet it bends easily when you push it into an obstacle.

dragodog

I will try to get some pics if i cant figure it out. tire looks fine but it has only been driven a few miles since this issue. Whatever went sketchy happened while i was doing this. I am going to lift the front axle back up and pull the tires and look at everything again. May loosen the front control arms again, track bar set her down and bounce suspension and re torque.

karls10jk

That's not going to change your toe unless you've managed to bolt the control arm on the wrong side of the bracket. You would know though.

dragodog

no not even I would do that. I didn't take the control arms off just loosened them.

nosnhoj1

You could take the axle off and install it upside down and it wouldn't change the toe. This is either a pre-existing condition that you just now noticed or it's really straight and just looks wrong when you eyeball it. Measure the distance between the tires front and back and post the measurements. Nothing you did will change the toe in any way.

dragodog

Ok chalk this up to a newbie.
while doing this I had the stock fenders off as i was replacing them with steel flat ones. So as a couple of you mentioned it was an optical thing with the body line of the jk with those off really makes the wheels look toed out when they are not. A friend has an alighment shop and offered to check it for me anyway. Toe was a little off but not much...just barely out of spec. Adjusted that. Caster which of course is not adjustable on stock jk was 3.7.
anyway i learned more about jk suspension than i really wanted to know. But gave me an excuse to get some more tools.

ChuckMRN

This was a good lesson for me as well. Now I use a string on both sides front to back tied to my 12 ton jack stands to help set track bars and drag link. Use a plumb bob and string for the toe.