Dana 300 Beef
When Jim from Just Jeeps called me up and inquired about building his Dana 300 for his rock buggy, I realized we have not given much attention to this tough little transfer case. A few years back we installed a 4:1 in our old CJ’s 300 and added the Currie twin stick option, but lately, it seems when it comes to ultimate t-cases, everyone has Atlas on the brain. I can attest that the Atlas may not be for everyone. Not only is it over $2000 US, it ended being much larger than I anticipated, and almost as heavy as a Dana 205 found in full-size trucks. I’ve experienced the weight more often than I care to during the numerous refits during our Krawler build...

Edge 4.0 Trail Jammer
Jeep 4.0L performance is always on a lot of Jeeper’s minds. The tough little 4.0 does a great job with bottom-end torque. Even so, many owners are looking for a bit of a performance edge to get a little more “go” into their Jeeps. Many performance upgrades can be bought individually. Edge Performance has put together a package that includes three of the most popular engine performance enhancements, all tuned to work seamlessly together...

Hydro Steering Setups
Recently I found myself at the Super Crawl. You may have followed along with the pictures last issue. I had a bit of time on my hands so I started having a look at what makes up a rock crawl buggy. As you well know these machines are far removed from what you and I use on the trail, but if someone else has tried something these would be “the guys” to borrow ideas from. In their quest for an unbreakable machine that can turn in its own wheelbase, there were some cool steering and axle set ups to be found. I took a few shots so maybe you can glean something from them for your own use – I know I already have...

Land Cruiser Twin Stick
If you’ve ever thought that your Land Cruiser transfer case shifter linkage was kind of hokey, well, you’re right. The wimpy little swivels, the number of bends in the linkage, and the fact that they get old and worn out all add up to a very sloppy control of this very important function.

Fortunately, Advance Adapters has designed a perfect cure for the sloppy shifter blues: a Twin Stick for the Land Cruiser t-case. This kit includes everything you need to replace the single transfer case shifter mechanism with two solid shifters that provide a much more positive actuation for Hi and Lo ranges, and 2-wheel to 4-wheel drive...

Rancho 9-Way Coil Over Shocks
Coil over shock assemblies have become very popular for rock crawl rigs over the past few years – we have a version in our Jeep. A coil over combines the shock and coil springs in one assembly – perfect for tight spaces. The other advantage of a coil over is the fact you can combine different lengths of coils and spring rates to best match your vehicle. As soon as we heard that Rancho was stepping into the coil-over market with a 9 way adjustable coil-over based on their popular RS9000 shocks we knew a set had to land in our Jeep to replace our non-adjustable versions...

James Duff 5-Inch Ranger Lift Kit
This is the new 5-inch Ranger lift for mid ‘90s Rangers. Duff sells their kits in stages 1-3. This is the stage three kit with full rear leaf springs and the front extended radius arms. The nice thing about the Duff kits is you can start with stage one and add components as you have the cash or need to increase the ability of your Ford 4x4...

Tire Siping & Grooving
We get questions all the time about where to get tires siped. If you’re wondering, sipes are small cuts made in the lugs of tires to enhance traction. I have found a great benefit to almost any tire that we have cut. As a matter of fact we sipe everything we run on our vehicles. The biggest problem it seems is finding somewhere to get it done as not all tire shops have the machine to do it in-house...

BDS Toyota Lift
After the restoration of the 4Runner’s body and some new lockers and gears for the axles, we were nearing the completion of the first stage of our Toyota build up. But before resorting to a front solid axle swap, we were determined to try out some independent front suspension (IFS) options...

Bushwacker Cut-Out Flares
Many vehicles these days have quite drastic positive offsets to their wheels. ‘Positive offset’ is when the wheels are set inwards under the vehicle and have more rim inside than outside from the centerline of the bolt pattern.

This can be both good and bad. If when lifting your vehicle, you want to widen your track width, it can be as easy as buying a new set of rims. It also means when you install those rims, you’ll need to cover up the tread portion of your tire to keep it street legal in most provinces and states...

Safari Snorkel Install
One day I had my head under the hood of the Toyota and all looked well, except... damn, Toyota did it too – they stuffed the air intake for the engine right behind the headlight. I know, they do it so you get a ram air effect into the engine and it draws the coldest air possible for the best running conditions, but the first puddle I hit is guaranteed to soak the air filter if not feed water droplets into the engine and at worst case feed water full on into the engine for devastating effects. Now I know lots of vehicles are like this but it doesn’t mean I have to like it – and fortunately, it can be easily corrected...

Trail Tamer Gears
The stock Toyota transfer case has a 2.28:1 low range. The Toyota Trail Tamer gear sets from Advance Adapters come in 4.0:1. 4.7:1 and 5.0:1, which help make up for the small engines in Toyotas by providing lower gearing for crawling down your favorite trail. The Toy t-case is a fully gear-driven unit with the high range and low range in separate sections of the case. The Trail Tamer gears only change out the reduction gears while leaving the high range 1:1 gears stock. The kit comes with three replacement gears, bearings and gaskets. The installation of the gears requires a full tear down of the case and takes 6 to 8 hours to complete...

Warn 9500 XP Winch
When picking a winch for your vehicle, there are more things to consider than just brand. After you decide on a budget for a winch (spend as much as you can afford), you will have to decide what pull rating you will need. While generally the higher the rating the better, if you drive a Suzuki Samurai a 12,000 lb winch would be considered overkill – heck it might outweigh the entire rear-end of the vehicle and lift the rear tires off the ground!

The general rule of thumb is that you want a winch rated at twice the weight of your vehicle. Then again, if your buddy wheels a Suburban and you have the only winch, and it’s a 6000 lb unit, it won’t serve your purpose and you run the risk of toasting it in short order...