I'm just not one to jump on "this product is crap" bandwagon especially of I have had no personal bad experience. Much like the kid who had a 10mm bolt break on his IRO arms. Now everyone who doesn't own one "oh my god it's crap!, tell everyone!". The arms or joints or welds didn't fail, a 10mm bolt did ( which in my opinion is wayy to small to handle all that stress). That can happen to anything or product.

 

Rusty's shipping is such a pain in the ***.

 

No doubt it is expensive but I can say it is fast.

 

No, nothing bad will happen on a 3-inch lift with either factory or RC control arms. People like to talk smack about Rough Country, that's all. Like Canada.

You can install a 3" lift without changing your control arms. It sounds like you are new to this, which is fine. Just keep reading and learning.

 

Nothing.

 

Ok. We are getting off track here. You're now bringing long arms into the discussion (your info is correct, but overkill for this guy right now. He'll learn about long arms later.)

 

How is that info off track? All he was saying was a reasoning behind long arms that pertains to getting the right angle on your control arms. He's not suggesting long arms.

 

Ok, ok. It was good info, and not "off track." I just thought it was getting into more info than OP could handle.

 

I had a 4.5 RC lift on my last XJ and had no complaints about it. It was cheap and worked. Was it the best? No but it worked and I never had any issues over the 40k miles I put on it. It was the x series kit as well. This was also like 8 years ago so not sure if the quality has changed since then. Will I be going with RC on my current XJ? Probably not. Like others have been saying, check out Zone.

 

Yes although that's the only bad thing I have to say about Rusty's is the high shipping.
It keeps me from buying his stuff....

 

Completely see what you're saying.
This seems to be a huge problem with any forum, no matter what hobby you're into man.
Seems to be more little birds chirping in the nest because others are chirping vs folks creating original thoughts of their own.

 

While I see what you're saying, Lee, and I know you "run RC"...you're not telling the full story of your situation here. We've had this discussion before. You are running their stuff, but replaced all the joints with non RC joints. Correct? That said...you also know MY story. My stuff was junk right out of the box. Didn't even get close to installing it. After much back and forth, they reluctantly sent a replacement, with the same damn issue. Then told me to pound sand, as I was "installing things incorrectly". I was in a pinch and did what I had to do to make it work, which was cutting new threads in their X-Flex adjustable CA's to make their joints thread in. After which their joints crapped out several times, and quick like hell, too. Had to pay for each replacement. Plus shipping. And, that was not my only dealing with them.

After several transactions, with shoddy product, and ****-poor customer service, I came to a conclusion. RC is a predatory company. They rely on new and uninformed people to be lured by a low price, and try to weasel out of their end of it every chance they get. Lee has done his due diligence, and used certain things from them, replacing any questionable components with "upgraded" or reliable parts.

IF you're looking to buy RC, it's your money. CAVEAT EMPTOR

While there are some bandwagoners, there are plenty of documented cases, like mine, out there. It isn't all people just "talking smack". The other part of my rant above goes to this: RC has low prices, so they do volume. With those numbers, some will be good, some bad. As seen in this thread alone, there is love and hate...it's how they as a company deal with it. I'm far from impressed. In MY experience. There's also another portion to this...some people just have no idea what a good Jeep suspension should feel like, or how it should perform. They buy a kit, slap it on, and say "yeah it's fine". I've had 3 different setups on my Jeep since I bought it. I can truly say RC sucks, because it did.

This is solid advice.

The problem here is determining which chirps are the real deal, and which ones are just mockingbirds, LOL

 

Only thing replaced on my RC components are the X-flex joints on the control arms. I swapped for regular rubber ends. My tracbar, pitman arm and shocks and stabilizer are out the box.

 

My 86 XJ had the 4.5" full RC lift on it as well with no problems. Only major differences I can tell were the tracbar and control arms. The newer ones are larger and beefier (joints and steel) than the 1st gen stuff. As for my swapping joints, I have no use for heims and wanted more streetable joints so swapped out for regular rubber joints (thanks to you Roni). But, yes, I give you the fact that you got very crappy product and service. As that's what the forum is for, you had a problem with xxxxx component of bran xxxxx lift. So, now Member X here now wants a lift to piece together. He/she sees part xxxxx is not good quality but part xxxxx is. Now they may have a budget so they take good parts xxxxx from lift companies xxxxx & xxxxx to piece together a lift within their budget. Hence what I did on my MJ this time around.

 

Roninofako,
That's true, who has the experience and who is just chirping out what they've read? So many saying the same thing.
I always tip my hat to responses like MWMahoneyjr gave which is
probably the best advice of just keep researching.
The problem is, most folks (especially people my age and younger) just won't do it. They keep asking questions powered by ambition (I think).
Or the fact that this is a microwave society, we're used to having things we want quick without effort.

My own bad experience with RC is with the older heim joint track bar.
Traveling at legal speed, it came apart as in the heim pulled out of the bar.
RC quit using that bar all together so I don't bring it up.
I now run the RE1660, 1665 bracket and 1670 brace on mine.

Aaaaaand, I just rebuilt my lower RC flex joints yesterday and I know they sucks baaaad.
But OP isn't looking to buy a set of those so, kept it to myself as well.

Thanks to Outlaw Star sharing his experience with me, I now know that I can source ends from somewhere else.
Currently looking at Heim ends with misalignment spacers to put in them from Barnes 4x4.