Quickly a little background to help recommend the best mod path:

This is her 3rd Jeep & 2nd Wrangler but she's never really enjoyed off-roading much so it's mainly my wife's daily driven pavement princess. She says it's the perfect Colorado vehicle because it's 4WD in winter, convertible in summer, fits 5 comfortably with storage room, & has more attitude than a boring SUV (she loves it so don't hate). This Jeep is our main mode of transport for Ski & Snowboarding or Camping & Hiking in Colorado EVERY weekend. She had 33" tires & about 2.5" of lift on her old TJ & wants to go bigger & badder with 35's for her new JK.

With that being said, she doesn't need crazy articulation or major ground clearance. In fact, I was thinking the body lift is a good way of getting the "poser" look she wants of a higher lift but keeping the center of gravity down & not increasing suspension angles. Pair that with a simple budget friendly lift & that seems like the solution to this problem while retaining fairly close to factory ride & reliability.

The Angel on my right should says just do 2.5" BB suspension lift & 1" Body lift & be done with it. Ahhh... but the Devil on my left shoulder says find a way to grow into a better solution without reliability or drive-ability issues. You all know that voice haha! It's paid off as well as got me into trouble with my many other modded cars before so I'm not sure if I should listen? I'm all about do it right the first time & blah blah blah... I'm just not sure it's worth the $$$ for her purposes. I'm more than mechanically inclined & have all the tools to pull off what ever route it taken FWIW.

Here's where I'm looking for some input. How would you recommend a suspension build that allows you to piece things together & grow as you go but break it into cost effective chunks. I'm not sure if you can have your cake & eat it too by not buying & wasting too many parts that'll just be replaced or upgraded again later. Or... does the original plan listed above just make sense for simplicity & cost. Thought, opinions, criticisms? Thanks in advance

 

That is the key phrase to me. Why plan a big, expensive, build when you know it's only for looks. A 2" leveling or 2.5" BB is plenty for the suspension, add a 1-1.25" BL if you want, chop the flares or go to flats and be done with it. Center the axles and do something about the caster if needed, and think about gears for the 35's. (you can run 37's with that setup if wanted).

If you go much higher in suspension height, the costs start going up very quickly. The cost will likely be inversely proportional to your wife's happiness level when you start blowing driveshafts and stuff...

 

That's a good question. The reason I'm debating is I'm not sure how much of a difference there is in ride, steering, dampening etc... from a proper 2.5-3" lift compared to a sorta-semi-kinda 2.5-3" lift.

Sometimes the difference isn't worth the effort or cost. Sometimes you're better off just doing it right from the start to save you money & headach of redoing shit.

Does that make more sense? I must have read all the documentation for every lift makers website out there & of course they all claim to be the best. I've easily gone through 70+ threads on lift selection on this site & still haven't quite nailed it down. I understand suspension lowering for performance but raising things up are a little bit different so I'm looking for opinions & real world experience before making any decisions. Thanks.

 

OME 2.5 lift, 35s, 5.13s and a programmer will get ya where ya want. To me its better than the stock ride. Being that you're in Colorado definitely get the gears or you're gunna hate driving your jeep with 35s. GL with your build.

 

This suspension:
The SPORT
http://www.gorancho.com/suspension.p...1_jeep_jk#lift

Combined with our rebate.
http://www.gorancho.com/promotions.php

More info on this kit in this link. Warning long.
https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/show...t%3B%26quot%3B

And good luck as well.

 

Thanks for the input so far... Keep it coming.