Summer 1995

Well, it's been a while since I have written anything about the jeep, actually it's been almost a year but there has been plenty to write about, I just need to remember some details.

After getting beat around on my stiff springs on the Whipsaw trip I decided I needed to replace my springs. The old military 10 pack springs were not doing much for my wheel travel or for the smooth ride jeeps are famous for (just joking).

Around this time Kevin Wyman opened his Offroad Outlet store in Redmond. I knew Kevin from the Offroad mailing list and he had moved out here from Colorado to start his store. Kevin had an old Flatfender too so he knew exactly what I was going through with my old springs. I really didn't want to get a lot of lift from new springs since the jeep was a little tippy to begin with, I just wanted a softer ride.

I ended up getting the Racho 2 1/2 inch springs which really turned out to give me 2 1/2 more inches of lift. It looked sort of weird but I got used to it after a while. I was really glad I didn't get the 4" springs. Putting the springs on was a pretty easy task as I remember, the only scary part was making sure the jeep was blocked up well so it didn't fall down on top of me.

The difference was incredable. I could actually jump up and down on my bumper and get things to move. It drove a whole lot smoother but it also tended to lean a lot more when you went around corners. Before when I went around corners it sort of felt like I was in a small car with sway bars but now if I went around a sharp corner too fast it felt like I was going to tip over.

To test out my wheel travel I drove around until I found something I could drive up on to get my axles twisted up. Once I drove up on the obstacle I turned off the jeep and hopped out to check out underneth to make sure everything worked OK. I was looking around under the jeep when a lady came out of a store and asked me what happened and if I needed a tow truck or something because the jeep was twisted up on top of a big curb. I think she thought I accidentally ran up on it and couldn't get down. "No, I meant to do this..."