Yes, you can extend your steering stops out to fit 31s on stock wheels. It will decrease your turn radius though. For a little while I ran 31x10.5r15s on TJ Canyons with stock height. My fenders were trimmed to accomodate (obviously), but the tires rubbed on my LCAs and swaybar if I turned tight. I simply compensated for it by not turning as tightly (the HUMAN equivalent of extending steering stops).


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I have a 2000 XJ Sport 2WD. Getting a 3” Lift this week. I’m on 30s and looking to get some 31’s 10.50. Thinking Iron man all country Mt or Mud claws extreme.
1st anyone have these tires and pic. Or any one have info on these if there good. Thanks.

 

ah man 2wd?

I work at a tire shop. I sell these budget tires very frequently. Both are good for the money, but I will lean towards the iron man.

 

Why would you say the Iron Man?
Thanks.

 

getting slightly better reviews from peeps that havr bought them from us.

 

OK, we've got the lift installed on FrankenJeep II, and we've got rubbing front and rear. The set-up and questions:

Front: 31" tires, 3" lift coils, shocks and track bar drop bracket. Turn steering hard-over left and right and tires rub against steering links, both sides. Backspacing problem, right? Will wheel spacers fix this? Other fixes? I know I can just adjust the steering stops, but I want to fix it rather than apply a bandaid.

Rear: Same 31" tires, 3" lift blocks under stock springs, longer shocks. This Jeep has a rear sway bar (Frank 1 doesn't) and tires are rubbing the sway bar blocks. See picture below. Backspacing again, right? Wheel spacers again? Or ... do I remove the rear sway bar? This won't be an articulating rock crawler, and I like the idea of keeping that rear sway bar there, but do most of you guys remove the rear sway bar?

Thanks for the advice.

 

Most if not all here lose the rear sway bar. Your right on with the backspace issue. What wheels is on it?

 

Imo spacers are like a bandaid as well in this situation. I don't like spacers or adapters in general. Majority of us remove the rear away bar as well.

blocks? Sigh

 

On the front - it's rubbing against your STEERING links or your Lower Control Arms? Rubbing against the LCAs will be corrected by, you guessed it, less backspacing.

On the rear... I have to point out first and foremost, those lift blocks are dangerous and not recommended for wheeling at all. This is also part of what's causing the rear sway bar bracket to rub your tires. On a normal setup, the springs mate directly with the perches... so you rear sway bar bracket would be located in the wheel opening, rather than 3 inches above it into your sidewall.

You really don't need the rear sway bar. I removed mine shortly after I bought it and I didin't notice ANY difference on-road. The "Country" package didn't even come with rear sway bars. So if you're worried about it being a safety issue, worry no further. Having that rear sway on the jeep with it lifted it just going to give you more trouble than removing it will.

If you really really want to keep that swaybar, you can do one of two things:

1) Ditch the blocks and get 3" leaf packs instead (recommended regardless). This will locate the leaf packs back onto the spring perches where they belong and lower the swaybar bracket back where it should be. It will also prevent axle wrap because you don't have the axle 3" away from the leaf springs.

2) Get aftermarket wheels with less backspacing. The most common wheel size that people with 30-33's run is 15x8 with 4" or 3.75" backspacing.

 

Thanks for the advice guys. Couple more questions:

So it sounds like backspacing is the solution to the front rubbing (yes, it's on the LCA's). The wheels are VERY nice so we don't want to ditch them, so we're talking wheel spacers. Question, if we do wheel spacers on the front, should we do them on the back also? Or do people typically just do the spacers up front?

Removing that rear sway bar sounds like the way to go. However, if I need to do rear wheel spacers to match the front, that would also take care of the problem, right?

And I agree on those rear lift blocks, NOT the way to go. We've decided we'll probably want to do a proper new leaf spring lift, but that may have to wait for round 2 of the upgrades. And this XJ won't be doing any rock crawling, just pavement, the occasional gravel road, and lots of snow.

 

if you insist on doing spacers, please do not cheap out. They are a dangerous item. Spidertrax is one that is recommended. You would need all 4 so all tires are equal.

 

If you do wheel spacers up front, you should do them in the rear as well. If it's only a 1/4 of an inch or so on say a drag car, you can get away with just the front or rear to clear fender or spring rub, but in the case of Jeeps, generally you need more like 1.5-2" of spacers... in which case, but ONLY good quality made-in-america spacers (Spidertrax, AlloyUSA, etc).

If you bought the spacers, it would eliminate the rub on the tires - for now - but if you notice, the ends of the bars on the rear go through the bushing and can "walk" out the end of them and potentially wind up making contact with your tire again.... I would either remove it altogether -or- at least until you replace the blocks with leaf packs to ensure those bars don't contact the tires.

 

I understand that cheaply made wheel spacers are dangerous, and we'll go with the recommendation from our local 4X4 shop. But assuming the spacers are high quality and won't fail, are there other dangers to using wheel spacers over rims with equivalent offset?

 

As long as you're using quality spacers and torquing them to spec - and re-torquing them at proper mileage interval, you should be fine.

ETA: The other thing you need to make sure of is that the spacers you get are hub-centric and nut lug-centric. Hub centric spacers match the bore of your hub on one side, and have a flange matching your wheel bore on the other side. This keeps the weight of the vehicle on your hub and center bore where it belongs and not on the lugs which are not as strong.

 

all spacers are dangerous. Quality ones are just less likely to fail. The owner of the shop i work at banned the sale abd instsllation of spacers at the shop a couple months ago after a guy lost his wheel on the road and he wanted to sue. We torqued them when they were first put on. 5k miles later he had never checked them since and one went flying. Dangerous things if you are not careful