I would have to agree with all the posts especially Planman's post here. You say that your jeep rides and handles better with the spacer kit. Well considering you started with a 3" kit and that was now compromised and you added 2" of spacer. I think one of the biggest things here is you are adding up all your lift heights....and due to the sagging your JK does not have 5" of lift. You likely only have a total of 3" and that is also likely the only reason your not experiencing a catastrophic failure or serious handling issues. As someone who has and runs a true 5.5" kit I know what it takes to make it ride and handle soundly. The other posters here are correct.
Don't take the advice you are given here lightly as they are only trying to answer your question and help you but understand that just because you don't like what your told doesn't make it wrong. The biggest problem here is that you told everyone 5" of lift, my first question is how much lift did you actually net, measure it. Then ask everyone using that number, not the number you added up which includes lost inches. You may get a more reasonable response from other forum members.
Most people here have enough knowledge to know that 5" of lift requires quite a bit to do on a JK, especially a 2 dr. So seeing that number sets off some red flags to people. If 5" was that easy in a JK, everyone would do it and all kits would cost the same as your 3" zone kit.

 

Although I usually spend too much time building my family's jeeps, testing them out, fixing my friends' jeeps, and wheeling our jeeps, I do spend too much time reading as well.

It has helped me learn how terrible my 2dr JK looked with a 1" body lift on top of the 4.5" long arm lift I installed:









Of course, once I realized how terrible the 1" body lift was, I removed it and cut my rear fender wells to just run my 2 dr with the 4.5" long arm alone:






You are right. It really cleaned things up:

 

In fact, I've been reading how terrible an idea it is to run such a tall lift as 4.5" on my 2dr--even though the wheelbase is stretched 3". So, my next mod will probably be to swap in 3.5" Metal Cloak or Rock Krawler springs and push my front axle out a little further to get closer to a 100" wheelbase.

But, maybe I rely too much on the opinions of others who have no experience and are just regurgitating stuff the read on line.

What do you think?

 

i think planman for president...


i also think rk springs are very short...

 

Sorry for being such an ass. Just reciprocating for the intimation that I don't know anything and am just regurgitating crap I read online.

 

INTERNET WHEELERS UNITE!!!!!!!

:thought:
We have long wheelbases on 4dr, we are wider than previous jeeps, we now have a lower belly height with gas tank and extra real estate under rig ....I'm not all about a lcg build if your crawling 4-5" seems to be the ticket with 37-40" tires.

And 2drs kill it in the rocks, loved my 2dr a lot.....104" wb would have been the
Perfect jeep 5" sitting on 40's....stable and not too long.

And keep up the good blurbs planman I'm fighting a shimmy in the front again as always your tutorial proved to be relevant to reread...

 

agreed 100% im at about 4.25" and a tad over 100" wheelbase no complaints here. I hate the jk ground clearance thats the only reason i might want 37s. id bet that 104" wheel base was damn near perfect someday i might push the rear another inch and the front another 2-3" to put me right there.

 

I didn't say it was all stuff you read I just wanted to know how much you have read and how much you have done your self, it is all good info and like I said I'm on a tight budget for the next few months then I will be doing all the control arms then drive shafts, after that I will look into moving the springs and stretching the wheelbase. It's hard to measure the lift now because I cut my flares and that's what I measured to before any lift, either way I've gotten lots of the info I was looking for thank you

 

Your jeep looks really good one day mine will look like that, and for the guy that said that much lift and 33" look stupid you are right it does look silly but at the same time I don't have the $1600 for the tires I want right now and am going to use these ones up first, the wheeling around here is very different from the few pictures in here we have to make our own trails and there is almost no rock crawling here it is mostly quad trails through the mountains and again the reason I put the spacers in with it is because I'm sick of getting high centered, hears a few pictures of the terrain here, never wheeled on rocks like that there is none here

 

Theres a decent ammount of work in stretching a wheel base, not terrible, but you cant just push the axles back.

Also heres a good referance to measure lift height if you havent moved any shock mounts.