I have a 2.5" kit now and have been looking at the 4.5" AEV kit for the longest time in order to run 37's with my factory fenders.

I am not interested in flat fenders, I want to keep my all white options.

I off road 8-10 times a year in Colorado, so there are some rocks, but nothing my 35's and 2.5" kit hasn't made it over. A lot of snow wheeling in the winter. So ground clearance loss that comes for geometry correction brackets or a long arm isn't a major concern.

My main concern is highway and street driving. I want to be comfortable in the jeep driving 5 hours or more if I want to.

I started researching long arm kits and it seems a good LA could provide everything I need. I am torn between the AEV and a good long arm.

Which would you go with, and if it's the LA, which kit would you go with?

Would like to keep the budget in the $3-$4k range with shocks if possible.

 

I like my BDS long arm but I went with bilstien shocks after the originals crapped out

 

Long arms, find a good shop that knows what they are doing and do a custom build.

 

I saw you say something like that a few weeks ago and planned on looking around, just not sure how much more labor that will involve which could really screw my budget. My typically shop is $75/hr so if they had to fabricate everything I would assume I would have $1500-$2000 in labor alone.

 

For on road comfort aev is very hard to beat , they are also very tough. My jeep dealer used to sell 4-5 types of lifts now only aev. If I had the money and was not wheeling every weekend hardcore, I would go with aev !

 

There is a lot of labor in a long arm kit period. If you are buying a kit you are paying for labor by the lift companies. They don't snap their fingers and the components magically appear.

A 36" long 2"x.25" control arm has $18 of dom tubing a $45 Johnny Joint a $14 threaded insert, $2 jam nut, and a $20 clevite bushing for a grand total of $99 in parts. It takes about 10 min to cut and prep, 5 min to weld, and cost about $10 to paint for a grand total of $134 built in a shop.
By contrast rock krawler sells their lower rear control arm set for $295. Having a shop build in my example would be $27 per pair cheaper x4 sets is $108 less then buying a kit.

By doing a custom build you can choose the components that you want and place brackets and bends in the control arms to optimize your suspension geometry.

 

I have the 4.5 AEV with upper/lower front Rock Krawler arms, stock arms in back. I have Toyo MT's in 37. I took it all over Telluride/Ouray trails except Black Bear (was raining) and Moab and it never missed a beat and drive a family of 5 back home to Dallas.

 

Thank you very much for the math and comparison. I do not have a clue of component costs, but this makes sense and seems it could be fairly close in cost.

 

Have any pics of your rig you care to share? Looks like you are running factory flares like I want to as well?

Also, since you are running adjustable arms, did you just remove the brackets that AEV uses for the factory arms? Everything I have read is AEV has their systems tuned to work in unison with each part, so it seems doing so would potentially create some distinction. Why did you choose to go this route? I'm just curious - you seem to be happy with it so I am intrigued.