Yes I am sure this has been covered 1 millions times.....so it should be easy to answer

JKU-R

I want a 2.5" lift. I purchased Rock Krawler 2.5" springs to go with other bits and pieces of a lift kit. My intention was to keep the truck light with stock bumpers as its mostly going to be on road (but I want the components good quality and capable off road). However, I stumbled upon a set of ARB front and rear bumpers and could not resist. The front bumper is over 100lbs and it has a large hole staring at me begging for a winch - I am going to try to resist.

So now I am wondering if I should send the springs back and get 3.5" springs or should I just put a spacer in the front after it and call it a day. Should I run a 3.5" in front and a 2.5" in back? Or both 3.5"? If I am sending these back should I consider another brand?

I want the best on road ride I can get, and I want a solid 2.5" of lift with bumpers and a hardtop after everything settles..... (At the same time, I don't really want to be sitting much higher. I have read that many people get more lift than advertised)

Thank you

 

People will bag on RK products in general as you saw in some of your other threads. I have RK springs and I'm fine with em but I have been unhappy with other RK stuff in the past just like most other folks. The issue with the springs for you will be that RK typically has crappy powder coating, and living where you do that isn't ideal. Regardless, those 2.5" springs, should you keep them, should hold up those bumpers ok. As with most springs, you will likely see more net lift than the stated 2.5". I would not go 3.5" unless the tires you want are dictating you need to. When you swap coils it's a little harder to predict where you're going to end up till they are under the rig. That's just part of it.

 

If you are talking about rust @resharp001 , I live up in Ohio and had a set of Metalcloak 2.5" springs on it (recently swapped to their 3.5") and the powder coating did not survive up here very well. They started to rust and flake after the second winter. The lower section on the rears were worse than the fronts and I suspect that is because they got pelted with rocks and debris that the front wheels kicked up. The fronts looked eh, but still had flaking powder coating on them. I think it's just the nature of living somewhere that they salt and sand the roads during the winter and am not real sure any particular brand of spring or anything that really gets cycled and flexes like a spring will have any kind of coating that will stand up too it for too many seasons. Now the springs themselves never sagged and are still perfectly fine for use. They just look like hell is all. Just an observation that I thought I'd post.

 

For what it is worth, I have Terraflex 2.5 springs on my 2012 2-Door JK with hardtop. I netted around 3" everywhere worth measuring and that is with a steel front and rear bumper (i.e., 10th Anniversary Bumpers) and heavy 12k winch up front (i.e., APEX from Harbor Freight). The Jeep sits level now UNLESS I add about 200-300lbs of payload for overlanding. Then the rear squats about 1/4 - 1/2 an inch. The added weight of your JKU will cause you to net less of a lift than I did (e.g., 2.5" springs will probably net you 2.5" of lift versus my 3") and likely will increase the amount of "squatting" you experience while loaded close to capacity.

 

Kind of disappointing to hear about your experience in regards to rust resistance in regards to the MC springs. I always read great things from others on their marketed rust protection gold coating and highly considered I may go with one of their lifts in the future.

I'm from Michigan and work in the automotive OEM industry. One of the major reasons I decided to go with the Mopar lift is due to my concerns with corrosion resistance and sagging springs. Two items, I often see RK parts failing miserably at. With my automotive engineering background experience, I'm quite familiar with automotive testing validation standards that OEM parts have to go through. The validation testing on most parts typically equates to a minimum of 5 years of corrosion resistance and with some OEMs such as Toyota a minimum of 10 years. Having worked for suppliers to the OEMs, it's a common practice to design common parts that may be used across multiple OEMs to ensure they meet the most stringent OEM testing requirements, thus those parts are typically designed and tested to meet the more stringent Toyota test standards. I learned the Mopar lift started its life off as OEM parts and therefore knew they had likely gone through those corrosion resistance OEM validation testing requirements when they were initially designed. So far I have been pleased with my decision, those Mopar springs still look pretty darn good and have held up to the Michigan winter salt brine very well, where I'm now going on 8 years of them being installed. OEM parts often aren't as pretty as the aftermarket offerings but when you have to make sure you're not spending out the wazoo on 5 and 10 year manufacturer warranties in providing replacement parts, reliability tends to take a priority over aesthetics in the design process. I know many don't want to believe this since I'm sure everyone has had some type of bad OEM part experience, while believing their aftermarket pretty parts are way better.

My Mopar 2in lift springs started life out under a stock load of having 3.25in of lift in the front. Since that time I added the AEV front bumper, skid plate, winch mount and a 12K winch and am sitting at around 2.5in of lift in the front.

 

The MC springs are not zinc plated. They are what looks to be powdercoated/painted by MC or MC sends them out to be coated before shipping to the end user. All of my MC suspension components that ARE zinc plated have handled all the winters and salt pretty darn impressively.


Edit: just found a pic of one of the front 2.5” MC springs that I pulled out this past spring. You can see it’s starting to rust and the paint is flaking. And you can see the control arms look pretty good considering they have gone through 3 or 4 hard Cleveland Ohio winters.

 

I did RK 1.5 springs couple of months ago. I gained 3” lift stock. Since then I did a stubby bumper with winch that added 200lbs of weight in the nose, 100bs from rock sliders, oil/trans belly skid and other skids maybe an extra 60, 300lbs in the rear with steel bumper and other misc my total lift as of today is 2 3/8” front and 2” rear. No idea how the RK springs were quality wise years ago. This is my first time ever running RK springs and I thought the springs were actually very nice. They’re handling the weight very well and I’d think the 2.5 springs will elevate my Jeep to the 3 /3/8 front 3” rear if I did them today. Front coils were RK01486 and they measured 20 1/4 long. Rears were RK01487 and they measured 16 7/8 long.
I’m running the OME L shocks in the front with RK 1.5 coils.

Hope it helps.