Go Ahead—Ask Us!
What do you want to know about? Is there something we tried out in the pages of this magazine that you would like to know more about? Send an email to jerrod.jones@off-roadweb.com and we’ll make sure we get you an answer.
Rough Country Dodge 2WD Lift Kit
Reports back from our tester are positive. He admits that he hasn’t spent a ton of time off-roading his truck since we lifted it, but his other hobby of riding dirt bikes constantly leads him down dirt roads. And that’s the biggest reason why our tester lifted his 2WD Dodge with the Rough Country suspension. The 6-inch kit gives him a smoother ride over the rough terrain and allows him to fit 35-inch tires, without lifting his truck really high in the air. We found the actual amount of lift to be only about 5 inches in front and about 3 inches in the rear. But it was the perfect amount of room to fit some 35-inch tires without any bit of rubbing.
Disc Brake Conversions
We’re not going to call anyone outright on this, but we’ve had very little success with rear disc brake conversion kits. The fact is that it is rare for a rear disc conversion to make an impressive braking improvement unless something else is done to the braking system. Disc brakes use a larger volume of brake fluid to produce the same braking effect at the wheel (as a drum brake), so different proportioning valves, master cylinders, or even brake boosters are often necessary to see any improvements from a rear disc conversion.
It’s not that the brakes themselves are no good—the hydraulic actuation to them just needs to be modified, and most retrofitters/owners fall short when it comes to properly retrofitting disc brakes where drum brakes used to be.
Klune-V Underdrive/Dana 300 Combo
Since the last long-term update on our giant Cherokee with 47-inch tires, things are not going as smoothly as previously stated. Unfortunately we’ve found a rather odd weak link. We figured it would be the axleshafts or driveshafts that let go first, but it turned out to be a transfer case. Trying to climb up a giant ledge, our Cherokee was making a tremendous show until we heard a big bang—which left the rig to be towed back home.
With 47-inch tires, a ton of power, a Klune-V underdrive and an Advance Adapter Dana 300 32-spline shaft kit, we beefed up everything else in the drivetrain enough to make a robust transfer case’s innards the weak link. The 32-spline kit we added to the Dana 300 looks fine, but the intermediate shaft next to it has suffered, and we’ll have to replace a few things before we can move this fullsize Cherokee again.
All this tells us is that the truck is built extremely well, and that the power we’re able to create with the big engine and gear multiplication of the Klune-V is too much for the transfer case when combined with the resistance of the 47-inch tires.
Toyo Open Country M/T
The Toyo Open Country M/T has to be one of our absolute favorite tires to use on a heavy-duty truck. We were reminded of this on a past snow-wheeling trip with a set of worn-out 40-inch Toyos with more than 40,000 miles on them; they still pushed through some serious snow. The tires are ready to be replaced, and they’re a bit louder than they used to be, but they’re still performing excellently. We were always worried about rainy highway use since there isn’t a ton of siping in the aggressive mud-terrain tread pattern, but our worries seemed to be completely unfounded because we never had an issue.
They get great traction in mud, snow, and dirt—even sand didn’t seem to present any “digging” issues that we thought we might see.
But these are fullsize-truck tires. The sidewalls are extremely thick, and this is a heavy tire. We would not put these on a lighter 4x4 like a Jeep—unless it’s so overbuilt that it weighs in like a diesel truck, because average Jeep weights are not enough to make this tire’s sidewall flex like it should.