i'm chris duke and today on motorz we're going to be installing a skyjacker lift kit on a 68 jeep hey, welcome to motorz. today we're going to be working on blue dog our old 68 jeep cj5 and we're going to be removing the old worn out 2" suspension kit and replacing it with a new 2" suspension kit from skyjacker which includes new springs, shocks, a new pitman arm and a steering stabilzer as well as all the necessary hardware to do the job. now you're probably wondering why we're going to be replacing our old 2" kit with a new one, that's because in a future episode of motorz
we're going to doing a spring over axle conversion which will give us another four and a half inches or so of height and that's going to give us the room we need for our larger wheel and tire combination. but for right now lets get this thing jacked up and get these tires off. we've got our jeep supported by jack stands right underneath our frame but we needed some additional height, so if you're in the same situation grab a large block of wood or do what we did - we're using out 12,000 pound capacity ramps to give us that extra height either way, you need a safe and stable surface. now the order in which we're going to remove these old components, we're going to remove the shocks first and then the u
bolts and then our springs. but before you begin you will need to put a jack underneath the axle that is going to release some of that tension on our springs and prevent the axle from moving around. now the tools you're going to need all available from the sears blue tool crew for an installation such as this include ratchets with various extensions and sockets both deep and standard some pliers diagonal cutters, a breaker bar, a torque wrench, flat blade screwdriver, various wrenches, white lithium grease and for that pitman arm you're going to need a pickle fork as well as a 3" gear puller. you may also need some anti-seize for those new bolts if you have an old
vehicle, like the one we're working on. you're going to need some mallets, some rags some safety glasses, gloves, an electric impact or you may also need some air tools. now we'll be right back after this break with more motorz. we're going to use our half inch craftsman ratchet to remove our bottom nut on our shocks and then a 3/8" ratchet for the top here's the reason we gotta get rid of our old gas shocks because when you compress them they don't rebound at all, unlike our brand new skyjacker shocks which take quite a lot more pressure to compress
and as you can see they rebound just fine with those u bolts out of the way, it's time to get our springs off next using some lithium based grease lightly coat the outside of the bushing and then insert it into the spring then do the same thing for the metal insert wth the bushings installed in the new leaf springs, we can do ahead and install them now you may notice that we didn't show you removing the bolts off the old springs, that's because we ended up having to cut them off, they just
got seized in there over time. so we got smart on our new bolts, we put some anti-seize around the non-threaded part of the bolts there we go now repeat the same process up here on the front but you don't want to tighten that bolt down until you set it down on the ground after bolting in your new springs you could install the new u bolts provided by skyjacker and the stock u bolt pad to that you have to line up this pin on the spring into the hole that
is on this perch now in the same way as you uninstalled it, this bolt here faces forward and out now one of the other things that we had to do in order for it to fit was that we had to drill out the holes just a little bit now we're going to go ahead and finger tighten these nuts down here on the bottom but before you tighten them all the way down make sure that these are straight up verticle just like that torque the nuts down to 80 ft-lbs of torques. we're going to go ahead and use our craftsman ratchet and a 3/4" socket
now if you get tired of wrenching like i do from time to time and you've got some air tools like we do, thanks to the sears blue tool crew you can take of the job in a lot less time with one of these, the thunder gun from ingersoll-rand you can get one these guys from the blue tool crew as well you don't want to tighten them all the day because you still need to torque it down to about 80 ft-lbs too to install the new skyjacker shocks, you have to install these two bushings as well as the boot and on some applications you may also have to install this metal sleeve, but for our jeep
we don't need it. so grab some lithium based grease squirt some on the end and hammer it on in yeah! with our shock fully assembled, we can go ahead and install it on our jeep when you're tightening down these nuts for the shocks you just want to tighten this until that bushing is slightly compressed. now before we get to the rear suspension there's two more things we have to do up front. we need to install a new steering stabilizer and a new drop
pitman arm, both provided by skyjacker. first thing we're going to do is we're disconnect this drag link right here so we have access to the old steering stabilizer which we're going to remove next. to seperate the drag link from the pitman arm we've gotta remove the cotter pin and this nut then we can take a pickle fork and jam it in the middle there and seperate the two using our craftsman ratchet we're going to remove our steering stabilizer install the new brackets provided by skyjacker for the new steering stabilizer installing our steering stabilizer we wanted to make
sure that this bracket on the right hand side is as far over but not getting in the way of anything and the bracket over the left hand side needs to be just over far enough so that the steering stabilizer is about half way out which we've marked with a little black pen right there. so once we've got that all into position we're going to use our makita impact and tighten these up same thing here, you just want to tighten this until these bushings are compressed a little bit. once you've fully installed your steering stabilizer, you'll want to turn it to ensure you have clearance for everything before removing the old pitman arm , you want to mark
the steering sector so that when you put on the new pitman arm it goes on the exact same position with our new drop pitman arm installed and our drag link reattached we can put on our wheels and tires and get to the rear of the vehicle. with the front out of the way, it's time to get to the rear which is going to be a lot easier because we don't all those steering components to deal with. we just have to swap out the shocks as well as the springs. we've got this thing all jacked up, lets get to it on top of our rear springs, we've got
these angled shims, we're going to reuse these so make sure you hang onto them this week we thought we'd check out a car show series that's becoming a nationwide event called coffee and cars. we caught up with some of the coolest cars on the road at the houston, texas coffee and cars located in uptown park in houston, texas as luck would have it, it was a beautiful day and the turnout was incredible featuring some of the most amazing vehicles you've ever seen people brought everything from classic restorations to exotic supercars to late model muscle cars, there was something for everyone including a custom
twin-turbo and supercharged ford gt and a very rare porsche gt3 all in all it was a great turnout and a fantastic show for automotive enthusiasts and spectators alike at the houston coffee and cars no matter what you're into, whether it be exotics, classics, or even deloreans, these incredible machines are on display for everyone to check out the spectators even enjoy the grand finale when all of these cars fired up and left the show. for more information about coffee and cars check out coffeeandcarshouston.com
and now it's time for partz! brought to you by the sears blue tool crew hey, if your check engine light is on, instead of taking your vehicle in for repairs, you may want to consider diagnosing it yourself you might be able to fix a simple problem without spending a ton of time and money 96 and newer vehicles have an obd-ii port that allows you to connect a scantool to read codes and diagnose many engine problems. this type of tool is what the guys at a service department use when your check enging light is on. the innova equus 3160 obd-ii scantool available from the sears blue tool crew
can help you diagnose these problems with all obd-ii equipped vehicles. it has the additional feature of being able to diagnose abs faults with gm, ford and chrysler vehicles using its live data streaming feature can also view real-time data such as rpms, temperatures and more. just plug the scantool in to your obd-ii port and it immediately goes to work you can also hook it up to your pc's serial port to save and email diagnostic reports, download flash updates, and get more information save time and money when your vehicle has a conniption with innova's obd-ii scan port
available from the sears blue tool crew. do you want bigger brakes without the hassle of installing new calipers and having to bleed your brakes? check out baer brakes errataspeed plus 2 brake system this direct replacement upgrade system includes baer's 14 inch two piece cross drilled, and slotted rotors and all the stainless steel hardware and brackets to relocate your factory calipers. the increased diameter rotor upgrade system uses your factory calipers to give you greater leverage and improved brake torque. if you have larger than stock wheels and you want better braking, then you should definitely check out the errataspeed
plus 2 from baer brakes avaialble for most applications. after you got your vehicle lowered back down to the ground you want to tighten all your spring eye bolts and then you're going to get a four wheel alignment. then at 50 and 150 miles you want to re-torque and re-tighten all of your nuts and bolts, as well as your u bolts. now one of the things that we did before we started this project is we measured both the rear and the front of our vehicle to check the height, the rear basically stayed the same while on the front we got an additional 2 1/2 inches, that's going to settle back down
to about 2 inches once we drive this thing around awhile. then in a future episode of motorz we're going to do a spring over axle conversion on our jeep and that's going to give us height we want on project blue dog. now i want to thank skyjacker and also the sears blue tool crew for all the tools that they've provided for this episode. for more information on all that stuff as well watching more episodes of motorz, just head on over to our website. we'll catch you next week on motorz.
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