WJ brake upgrade thought

[Joliet Johnny]

Noticed bad upper ball joint when diagnosing bad u joint. So while I'm in there figured now is the time to upgrade brakes. As far as I can tell I may be able to just use the WJ wheel bearing which will change my front wheel bolt pattern but make doing brake jobs easier or I can drill rotors and keep XJ wheel bearings. Am I right so far? If that's true then Id be smart to buy a spacer that converts the rear to 5x5. If I decide on the spacer is that going to screw up the laser guided alignment machine that my XJ will find its self on when this is all done?

[4.3LXJ]

Yes you can drill the WJ rotors, I did. But, bear this in mind that you need to do some track bar work to do this right since the drag link end will be raised about 3". So to do this right you need to lower the frame end of the track bar by the same amount. Having the old track bar position will lead to death wobble sooner from any worn parts

[bluedragon436]

Need to get back to collecting up parts for doing this upgrade... Was going to try and do it when I did the ball joints.. but think the joints will be getting changed out shortly... so won't be ready to do the WJ upgrade @ that time.. but will definitely be collecting up the parts... and data/info to hopefully make it easier/faster upgrade!!

[XJ Wheeler]

I believe you need to swap knuckles as well. The caliper mounting points are probably different.

Sent via messenger pigeon. I talk, he types.

[4.3LXJ]

Yes, that is part of the swap

[myjeep]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjpEc07AJxM

[4.3LXJ]

Thanks for the vid. Couiple of things though. He did not take care of his track bar, very important if you want to avoid death wobble. The other thing is that he used heims for tie rod ends. You will have to purchase a new tie rod and drag link. I recommend regular tie rod ends for daily drivers. Heims wear out and will give you sloppy steering after extended use and you will have to replace them. The hot ticket for this I think is to get some tapered inserts, available from Tereflex and other companies and do a tie rod flip if you can get away with wheel clearance. I still use 15" wheels, but have wheel spacers. I did do a little grinding on the flashing on the calipers for wheel clearance.

[denverd1]

so this is front end stuff, whats the point of going to WJ rotors and calipers up front? Upgraded WJ steering is on my short list, didn't watch the 22 min video. I'm guessing the WJ knuckles make WJ steering a direct bolt in?

I'm looking to do WJ disc swap on the rear and curious what all that entails. I'll start another thread. Would be cool to find brake stuff all in one section

[4.3LXJ]

Denver, the WJ stuff is current generation tech and we have old gen tech. You cannot use your current brake calipers on the WJ knuckle. It is basically all or nothing. When you do this swap, you can no longer use the XJ tie rod. You will be back to old school seperate drag link and tie rod. Also note that the WJ tie rod is kind of low and vulnerable. I did a tie rod flip on the drag link and tie rod for a few bucks. But if my measurements are correct, the WJ tie rod is too wide by a couple inches to use on the D30 You will need to use new stuff for that. As for rear brakes, I used WJ stuff. It has about twice the braking power as the ZJ disc set up. However you will not be able to use the WJ backing plate, it will not fit the XJ rear axle. I fabricated a plate for it and welded it to the housing. You might want to take a look at the latter part of my build thread to see what all I did

[denverd1]

will do Steve. thx man