I bought in brand new in 2017

 

The. Plot. Thickens!

 

I have had a water leak coming in that they can't fix from the right corner of the hard top and also have a wind noise/air coming in from the drivers door that can't seem to figure out either so maybe this is all linked together some how.

 

I'm with Resharp on this. It seems it would be pretty obvious if it was due to an accident since the JK is a body on frame and it would be pretty easy to spot some frame misalignment.

As a further FYI, in regards to my spring rotation suggestion. I would go from almost touching up to 3/4in of clearance as I rotated the spring on the axle perch which looks very similar to the differences between your driver side and passenger side in regards to the clearance between the spring and sway bar links.

 

Mine is similar, always has been close to rubbing on the passenger side and plenty of clearance on the drivers side. BTW, mine also has JKS links and OME springs.

I think it's all about tolerances stacking up. The spring seats aren't welded at a perfect angle, the springs aren't perfectly straight, the sway bar bushing mounts aren't perfectly straight/aligned, the front cross-member isn't perfect either, etc. And I think the the JKS links stick out a bit more than stock links too.

Here's what I did years ago: Loosen the sway bar and re-tighten it as full forward as possible -- emphasis on the passenger side. There's clearance in the bolt holes, and adding a bit more might be appropriate. Change the length of the sway link so that it spends most of it's travel in between coils. Note that the JKS link pivots on it's ball-joint and it can look worse than a stock link when turned. You can try re-seating or swapping springs side to side, which made little-to-no difference on mine. Add some paint or tape to the coil and occasionally check if it's rubbing.

I like Red's spring rotation idea too. Might want to give that a try.

Hope this helps,

 

Let us know what you find, I am curious to how this turns out. Mine are pretty close but do clear so I figured that was just part of the design, no wasted space. Since you have aftermarket Control Arms, if someone installed them for you maybe take the jeep to them and see what they think. Maybe they are a little long and pushing the axle forward?

Good luck.

 

I've not removed my sway bar, but if there is indeed a little play in the mounting holes this makes the most sense. I don't disagree with any of the other comments regarding springs being rotated and the imperfections of perches and such on top of adjusting the arms differently, but when it boils down to it I get what you're saying in that the sway bar itself (or it's mounting) seems wonky. In the end, I don't think it's a huge deal....or anything to really fret over. If it were mine, I'd probably try to adjust the sway bar forward a bit for the clearance, even if it meant I had to drill and tap a couple holes to relocate it myself. If you don't wheel, it's probably not that big of a deal at all either way. If you do wheel, I'd probably have a minor concern (as it currently is) of the spring catching it at full articulation as that axle moves around a touch.

Hopefully there's a bit of play in the mounting bolt where the bushing is.

 

I would start by checking if the front axle is on straight. Did you have an alignment done? If it is straight then you can either adjust the mounting brackets (grind a bigger oval hole) on the sway bar so you can push if forward a bit or shorten the lower control arms a bit to pull the axle back a bit. You would need upper adjustable arms to keep your caster though.

 

I was thinking of this one earlier but wasn't sure which way of adjusting the arm length would work best. My initial thought was to decrease the lower arm lengths as you suggested. However, when you decrease the arm length it pulls the mounting brackets which are at the bottom of the axle and thus rotates the axle housing, where the spring mounting perches are at the top of the axle and would then seem to rotate those perches forward as the arms are pulled back, thus putting the spring closer to the sway bar link.

At least that was my thought, but am not 100% certain that is how it would play out.

Additionally what makes me think it may work this way has to do with a discussion where you had made a similar suggestion based upon a problem I was having. It was where the bottom of my front track bar was coming in contact with one of the upper fins on my Solid front diffy cover. You had suggested to shorten my lower adjustable arms to pull the axle back some. At that time my caster was at 2.7deg so decreasing the lower arm length likely wasn't going to work very well for me since my caster was already pretty low but drove fine at the time. I ended up grinding the upper fin down some on my diffy cover which solved the contact problem. However, later I increased the length of my lower arms and brought my caster up to 5.2deg and my concern after doing that was that my diffy cover may once again start to rub on my TB since I was pushing my axle forward. However, when I inspected it to confirm that problem wasn't going to come back to haunt me, it actually looked like I had more clearance between that upper diffy cover fin and my TB. Which made me think that since I increased the length of the lower arms, then that leaned the top of my diffy cover backwards further away from the bottom of my TB.

 

^^LOL, the JK hokey pokey