PA Jeeps
The Garage => Technical Advice and Questions => Topic started by: trick11 on January 27, 2009, 07:18:45 am
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I'm looking to put a 4.5in lift on my 99 XJ and was told to use a standard length SYE, then a front drive shaft from an XJ instead of spend extra money. It is my daily driver, so I'm not really sure, any suggestions or help would be nice.
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if youre building an xj get this book high performance jeep cherokee xj builders guide by eric zappe you can fet it at amazon for about $15 and its worth 20 times that and im guessing you havent been under yours yet because the front dshaft is about 28" long and the rear is about 40+" if you use an sye in eliminates about 3" increasing the distance there is no way it would work unless you were having one built and using the double cardan and slip from a front dshaft which is what i plan on doing. theres no location in your profile or id suggest someone to help you out but mt zion 4 wd in dover are a good choice hope this helped thnks
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Go to BookFinder.com (http://BookFinder.com) , insert in Author block Eric Zappe and you'll find a ton of listings for his book. The cheapest is from A1Books for $16.42 shipped to your house. And YES, it's worth 20X that much. You can use the front shaft, but as Hillbilly mentioned, you'll have to have it lengthened and balanced (and maybe still not be strong enough), so I'm not sure it's worth the few dollars saved. I have heard of stories from people who saved some money by NOT buying Tom Wood's 4xshaft.com (http://4xshaft.com) products. They received a nice D/S that was not balanced correctly so it had a real bad vibration. He had to send it back. :'( I'm not saying you can't get, or make, a good rear D/S anywhere else, but T.W's. has a BIG reputation for HIGH quality products.
I don't know any 4X4 shops up in your area, Bloomsburg, but I'm sure someone on here does. My suggestion is to do your lift and see how bad, if at all, your driveline vibrations are. You might find you can live with them. If you're going to off road with lots of "flexing", then you might need to invest in a SYE to eliminate any binding of the front U-Joint. Otherwise, for a DD you should be fine.
Below are a few links to help you out on your Cherokee journey...
EricsXJ.com (http://EricsXJ.com) Eric Zappe's website. He has some great write ups!!! and he's a nice guy.
http://www.naxja.org/ Every XJ owner should be signed up here... (No matter how wild and crazy your idea is, it's already been done at least 10 times by other XJ owners, at least 5 of them have posted detailed accounts of how they did it and how it turned out, and even some of them come with pictures!!!)
http://www.quadratec.com/default_cherokee.php Great place to order from and they give us (PA Jeeps members) a discount on most products.
Good luck on your build and don't forget... there's always LOTS OF OPINIONS (and even some good advice) here for ya.
Tattoo 8)
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Alright thanks for the help, every little bit helps. Im gonna hold off on the SYE for right now and see how bad the vibrations are to start.
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My 2 cents...don't take short cuts when you're talking about something as important as the drivetrain of your vehicle. When I had my Jeep lifted there was no vibration, waited a year and then had the SYE installed to gain the clearance I lost when they lowered the transfer case.
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Check out naxja.org A lot of people use the front drive shaft in the rear with the sye. A big benefit of it is you can carry one spare drive shaft that will work front or back.
I believe your Xj has to be an auto with an 8.25 or 44, the 35 won't work. You'll need a front DS from the same. FYI a manual FDS is about an inch shorter, and a FDS from a zj is about an inch longer then the Xj auto.
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I just got my copy of Eric's book in the mail today, and I'm really enjoying reading it. Like the rest said, BUY THIS BOOK! It's answering a lot of questions that I had already.