XJ guys?

Infamous1

Infamous1

Well-Known Member
Joined
Aug 14, 2010
Location
Pittsboro
Went and picked a two door XJ for a buddy last nite, has a budget boost on it with a dropped pitman arm and fenders trimmed to fit 33s. The steering box was broken off of the frame and the bolts broken off in the box. It already has a plate on the outside of the frame so I drilled the bolts out of the box and ran grade 8 bolts through the frame and the box then put nuts on them. My question is what are you guys doing to keep this from happening? Never been much of an XJ guy so any help would be appreciated.
 
Plate, plate and more plate. Outside of the "frame", inside of the " frame" with 3/16 will almost insure it won't rip through. Also look into swapping over to a YJ or fsj 4 bolt Saginaw box. That fourth bolt makes a difference.
 
the cheap way to brace the steering box that many do is use 2.5" exhaust clamp on the bottom of box right above the pitman arm and calmp it good and tight..then run a rod of steel/pipe/square tubing whatever is heavy duty enough and weld it on the other side of the frame. you can feel the difference from this and i've done this on all my xjs for 9 years now since someone told me and it has worked perfect,,,even running 39.5s for several years just driving around on the road though. (my guess is the plate was added too late on your xj and even after the plate was put on, the weakness behind there was just matter of time)
 
Thanks for the input guys we found a decent enough looking brace for $70 so he ordered that. Hopefully we can minimize the breakages with some plating and a brace.
 
A drop Pitman arm on a budget boost xj doesn't sound right. That may be putting your drag link and trac bar at different angles making the steering feel funny.
 
Back
Top