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See this LJ! What's Your Favorite Jeep? Chaos Fab Shop owner AK talks about his favorite Jeep & why.

Shop Talk with AK- His favorite Jeep & why.

One of the questions I get asked all the time is what’s your favorite Jeep?

Which one is your favorite?

Which one would you pick?

What would you choose?

And for me, my answer is it depends on what you’re gonna do with it. But if I had to pick one Jeep that was my favorite overall, it’s a Sleeper build and it’s an LJ. Now, a lot of people look at this old LJ that’s here and it’s on little 32, 33-inch tires and some all terrains.

And then you take a look through the rest of the shop at all of this- king coil overs. We got king coil overs and bypasses on that one over there, hydraulic bump stops, all of this stuff. Everything that’s in here is on long-travel suspension.

But what I love about this little guy right here, is the geometry is perfect, you can drive it like a rally car. We can drive it in four-wheel drive at any speed and we can throw it into corners and it stays flat because of how we’ve set up the suspension on this.

It’s a TeraFlex LCG long arm, we’re running it about two and a half inches of lift, and we’re running Falcon shocks on this thing. Now, this has a triangulated four-length suspension, long-arm suspension that’s underneath there. And we’re gonna take this out to the ramp and flex this thing out.

I love that we can drive this anywhere. I love that we can show up to any trial and it is very unassuming. You got the guys with the bigger Jeeps on 37’s and 40’s will laugh at it like, ‘Ah, what are you gonna do with this little guy?’

But when you see this thing flex, and when you see the way this thing drives and when you see the way it reacts and the way it performs on the trails, the guys with the big 37’s and the ’40s by lunchtime they’re probably gonna have some tears as to why they can’t lose this little LJ.

So it’s about how you set it up. The bottom of this thing is completely skid-plated, the axles that are in here are a Dana 44 axle but they’ve been upgraded with heavy wall housings. They’ve also been upgraded to 35 supply.

So there are 35 SP supply RCV axle shafts in the front of this thing, on a 33-inch tire. We can hammer down on this as hard as we want to. And the engine doesn’t make enough power to break any of the things that we’ve done.

So that means that you can drive this thing anywhere you want to in the country. Wheel, any trails that you want to in the country and drive it home as well. So this is one of my favorite builds. I like that it doesn’t have all the flashy stuff on it.

I like that it looks like a very unassuming LJ. Think about every time you go to an RTI competition what you see with, with these short-armed Jeeps especially the TJ, actually anything with short arms. When these axles flex, they steer.

So if you come around and you look at this axle you actually, you can see it even better on this side. If you look at the direction of wheel travel here compared to the body, we’re at full flex, and the tires and the axles are still going in the same direction of travel, which means that we can go to this position while we’re screaming down the trail and the steering wheel won’t move. We can still go straight.

So it doesn’t have the axle steer that a lot of these short arm Jeeps do. Look back through the pictures look back through the flex competitions. When they flex out, these axles will steer, which means that every time there’s an imperfection in the road, every time the body of the Jeep rolls just a little bit, your Jeep is gonna steer without any input from the steering wheel, versus this one, that’s gonna go straight, even if it goes to full flex at speed.

We’ve got this much flex on little 32, 33-inch tires. And when you tune these things right and you’ve got good shocks and you’ve got good springs, it really doesn’t matter if you lift a tire in the air, you’re going so fast you just lift it and you just carry a tire. Look at the Grand Cherokees.

Look at the Porsches. Everybody says these IFS vehicles can’t wheel. Everybody says, you know, there’s no way you can take that out on the trail; but also take a look at what the side by sides are doing. It’s okay to lift a tire. The other three tires have traction on there. So same thing with this one.

If I had to pick something that I wanted to use, and this- it was the only Jeep that I could have, this would be it. I might consider putting a diesel in it, but really what I want to hear is what do you like and why? What’s your favorite Jeep and why?

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344 Victory Rd, Winchester, VA 22602

Phone: (540) 323-7434

Hours: Mon-Fri: 9AM – 6PM EST