A few things:
Needs longer rear shocks. On bumpy/rocky roads the rear shocks keep topping out and wreck the ride. I also need to lower the bump stops, the rear tires rub a bit. No tire cutting though, as rounding the inside of the fender-well kept it from snagging the rear tires. I really want to get a set or two of the new Daystar adjustable bumpstops and make them work. They are sexy and a lot cheaper then the Terraflex ones.
Had to hammer in the back of the front fender well a bit more, there as a few spots that snagged tires on tight turns. I also had to trim the plastic on the front inside of the rear fender-well. That was resolved when I tore off all the rocker paneling, then just hammered the lips flat.
She really needs a 4:1 t-case for rocks. When you hit a ledge where you had to climb up all 4 tires at once from a dead stop it just didn't quite have enough power and the engine would stall out. The solution was to keep the tires turning or hit it at just a bit of an angle so you could get one tire up. Should be fine for normal trails though. I did skip the Escalator as I wasn't sure I had enough power for the climb. Hell's Gate went smooth, but you can hear the engine almost stalling out on the last climb, if you watch the video you can see the tires almost come to a stop.
It is a bit underpowered, when fighting a strong headwind I had to drop down to 2nd and maxed out around 50. A tune-up and 2" exhaust will be in the future. We'll see how that changes things. When not fighting the wind a 60mph cruising speed when the tires are aired up was easy enough to keep up. 5.32 gears would be nice but not a requirement.
Rocker panels lost all their plastic coming down Amasa Back/Cliffhanger. Kept it clean until the end, when dropping down one of the last obstacles I scrunched up both rockers, so they need to be cut out.
Mileage on the trail was a lot lower then I am used to. 14mpg was the average including the drive to the trail, just a touch better then BRD HNTR with his V6. My SJ could wheel close to 24 hours on a single tank. Lower gearing in the t-case and a tune-up might help pick it back up but it will probably never be where it was due to the automatic.
Driving with the auto was a bit different. I had to drop it down to L when going down hills as it wanted to up-shift. Even then I had to ride the brakes a lot, but it wasn't to bad. It was a bit more relaxing drive without having to shift between gears all the time. Turns you into a speed wheeler.
Power Steering is nice, takes a bit to get used to. You don't feel the trail like you do with manual steering. No issues with turning though, it was plenty strong for the 33x12.5" tires.
The tires worked great, hooked up without any issues running at 12lb and took a lot of the shock out of the smaller bumps. Plenty of traction but has some road noise above 50.
Things that need to be done:
Front main seal. It started blowing oil out the front end on the last day. Stayed clean until then.
Rear wheel bearing. Drivers side started making noise on Day 3. Replacing both wouldn't be a bad idea, I'll check it out when I pull the axles.
A lot of comments on the look of the rig and I had 3 people stop to talk to me on the drive home when they saw it on the trailer.
