Lowering Suspension - Laying Frame

This amount of drop reduced the operating angle of the rear driveshaft's CV-joint by two degrees. Our rocker panels were lowered a couple of inches so some sort of body protection will be added in the future.

Seventeen
The new 17-inch tires and wheels are the hottest thing going for off-roaders presently. Bred from race-inspired technology, the combination of BFGoodrich's excellent 37x12.50R17 Mud Terrain T/A tires and Weld Racing's forged 17x8 Typhoon wheels balanced easily and was super smooth at speed whether on pavement or fireroad.

Visually, it's a sleeper combo since the tire doesn't appear to be as large as its sidewall specs state, but believe us, those extra inches really help keep you off the rocks (not to mention all the nice additional room now around the brakes!). The tire's sidewall height actually matches what a 35-inch tire on a 15-inch wheel would offer, which translates into a better-balanced, large tire. There are, however, some things to keep in mind when rockcrawling with this combination as compared to the 35s-on-15s arrangement.

We used to run our Load Range C 35-inch BFGs at 10 pounds of pressure on the trail to get a nice footprint. The 37-inch BFGs have a stiffer Load Range D rating and at 10 psi they burped air way too easily, leaving us without enough pressure to retain the tire on the bead. Even when the almost deflated tire stayed on the bead, the taller wheels tended to hit rocks, which tore up and severely bent the rims.

We found that raising the pressure about 4-5 pounds over what we ran in our 35s kept the air in the 37x12.50R17 tires much better without any detriment to trail performance.