::Start Rant::

I purchased an RC 3" Lift Kit from CarParts.com. Price was $210 + free shipping. I ordered it and made a miscellaneous query to the customer service department regarding shipping. The reply I received was my order had been canceled because the item in question was discontinued due to a misprint of the kit's information in their online catalog. I was kinda down/disappointed/upset but whatever I decided to search some more.

After 3 hours of searching, I landed on JC Whitney. They had an RC 3" Lift Kit for my XJ for 235.99 and with a coupon code, free shipping. Meanwhile all this, I'm still going back and for with Carparts.com customer service because I had also purchased shock boots from them and they were going to ship them to me for free. Anyway, I place the order with JC Whitney and a day goes by. I speak to the customer service rep from Carparts.com regarding some clarification i needed regarding a recent invoice I had received from them. Her reply to me was that, among other things, she had noticed that I had placed an order with her sister company JC Whitney for the RC 3" Lift Kit and that she regretted to inform me that they too have discontinued the selling of the product. At this point I was enraged. 1) I expected more professionalism from JC Whitney 2) I was pissed off at running out of luck twice! and 3) I expected more customer satisfaction. JC Whitney has been in business for 95 years according to their mail order catalog. I'm sure they are an enormous multi-million dollar company. I expect that kind of company with the amount of funds, technology, and reputation it has, to keep its online catalog up to date as far as discontinued products go. I was really upset. And more so because I found out a day later by a 2nd party customer rep! They didnt bother to notify at all! In fact, I received a confirmation email today regarding the shipment of the lift kit! I was very mad.

I wrote the customer service rep in return and expressed respectfully my sincere disgust at how JC Whitney handled this. I felt like I had wasted my time. I mean, just imagine, I would've sat there for a week or so waiting for this package to arrive and nothing. She apologized, promised to forward the letter to her superiors, and then also mailed me a $20 gift card for my troubles so as to not lose me as a JC Whitney customer.

I get home at midnight having moved forward with my day to a rather disturbing voice mail from my girlfriend. It turns out, JC Whitney has charged my bank account $236.96!!!! When I spoke to a live chat customer service rep, this was literally their reply. "I see that your order has been canceled and I do apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you. But as far as the charge to your bank statement...." After which (to my great luck) my laptop dies unexpectedly and without reason. After rebooting, I find that the live chat option is off the website and I guessed that customer service closed. UGH! I ended up (going against my better judgement) ordering the RC kit from truckaddons.com (i've heard alot of bad things about them) but i called them up and they gave me a good deal shipped for the RC kit ($259 shipped!) and I should get it by Wednesday. Only thing with them is I ultimately forgot to state that I had a Chrysler 8.25 rear diff but oh well.

::End Rant::

Questions:
1. What is cheap decent 15 x 9 rims for an XJ?
I'm considering looking for steelies and painting them black to be honest.
2. What would you consider an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY for upgrading from a 3" lift to a 5" lift?

Excluding suspension components such as springs, shackles, isolators/boosters, blocks, AALs, and Spring packs.

And what I mean by absolute necessity, I mean a must-have, not a "it would be nice to have". Kinda like the bare essentials to upgrading excluding the luxuries? I'll prolly end up calling RC in the future and having them put something together for me to use to upgrade but I think it would be cool to get input from other users on here as to what they think would be a necessity.

Cheers!

 

cragar soft 8 are good rims...thats what i have..last time i checked they were about 60 per rim...they are steelie and come in black so you save time on having to paint....check 4wd.com or quadratec.com

 

http://www.quadratec.com/products/92601_4XX_B_PG.htm

 

I had similar issues ordering a roof rack from carparts.com. About a week passed and there was no shipping confirmation and I kept getting the runaround from them about when it would ship. One person would say it's indefinitely out of stock, another would say its shipping today, another said it would ship at the end of the month. I cancelled my order, ordered from streetsideauto.com, got the rack in 3 days. 5 days later, the UPS guy showed up with a roof rack from carparts.com. They have a bunch of clowns running that place.

 

I just bought a 3" lift from the junkyard. All the parts were pretty much in stock. The rear (Bastard pack) was less than $30.00.

The front was less than $20.00 so far for the (V8-ZJ = 1-2" lift) coils. I may have to actually buy some 1.75" spacers though. I can get those for less than $40.00.

My T/C drop cost about $8.00 at the local big box parts store.

Total cost will be around $100.00, unless I can find some cheaper coil spacers.

 

i got that same lift a year ago or so and well its on my jeep sitting on 31x11.50 swamper ltbs and v5 craigers..


btw im on a lil bit of a hill n that was with my cell phone!!

 

I got my Cragar v5's from Summit. They were several $$ cheaper than anywhere else.

 

same place i got mine n i love em could use powder coat or some kinda paint that wont rust like these do..

 

Why not just call RC...

 

Thanks to everyone for your posts. It seems the consensus on wheels would be cragar soft 8s lol cool beans. I've been lookin at them for a while. Nowwww one more thing, tires? anybody recommend a specific brand? I'm lookin for 31x10.5x15

 

what are your plans for usage of your xj i got 5 years out of my bfgoodrich all terrain kos on my buds dodge now still going strong and my xj is my daily driver