AYBE YOU HAVEN'T MADE THIS MISTAKE, but chances are, you know a lot of 4x4 buddies who have. They buy a nice Jeep to take off-road. It's not new, but it's solid and intact with no glaring defects like fluids dripping spots on the road. They stand back, appraising their project and think: "New tires, new big tires, new big, fat tires. Yeah!"
Then, they find out their big-wheeled toy doesn't have enough power to get up and over steep climbs. There is better ground clearance, but no better articulation. They're eating everybody's dust on the trail, nobody wants to be behind them. The rig is an albatross. They start throwing performance upgrades at it until somebody points out the problem lies in the rearend, like gearing. There's always somebody like that in the crowd - the guy who's got the answer to everything. Problem is, in this case, he's right.
We could go on and on with this unhappy odyssey, but we won't. But this scenario is one that Currie Enterprises has seen all-too-often, and addresses on a regular basis with its chassis upgrades.
"The biggest mistake people make is they don't think ahead. They don't ask themselves 'where am I going?'" says John Currie, son of the company's founder, Frank Currie. John is always working on new products and product engineering and is always thinking ahead. Currie Enterprises started out manufacturing axles, but foresight and thinking ahead has lead them to develop suspensions and body protection as well. Their thinking is backed by nearly 30 years of both off-road experience and product development. The Currie's know what works and what lasts. The trick is to put together components that work with each other and get you where you want to go.
"The biggest mistake people make is they don't think ahead."
John Currie, son of the company's founder, Frank Currie. John is always working on new products and product engineering and is always thinking ahead. Currie Enterprises started out manufacturing axles, but foresight and thinking ahead has lead them to develop suspensions and body protection as well. Their thinking is backed by nearly 30 years of both off-road experience and product development. The Currie's know what works and what lasts. The trick is to put together components that work with each other and get you where you want to go.
Example: Once you've got those fat tires and lower gearing, your stock axle is going to take a serious beating. Time for an axle upgrade. The axles in Currie's front and rearend packages are 50 to 75 percent stronger than the factory stuff.
Like many family businesses, Frank Currie started in his garage. That was back in 1959. He made rearends based on the Ford 9-inch for personnel carriers, electric carts, scissor lifts and other specialty vehicles. In just five years, the business moved into a 5,000-squarefoot facility in Placentia, California. Even more significant, in 1967 he bought his first 4x4, a '63 Jeep station wagon. He dropped in a Chevy V-8, re-arched the springs and threw on a set of farmimplement tires (this was long before Akron's tire factories grasped the concept of all terrains and mud terrains).
This vehicle would eventually give Frank and his four sons, John, Ray, David and Charles, the 4x4 bug, along with an idea to develop aftermarket rearends for Jeeps. For the Curries, this bug was more like a virus immune to antibiotics.
Fast forward 30 years to when Frank and John took a Currie-equipped TJ to their first rock-crawling competition in 1998. The Jeep, Rocky Road, was a rolling catalog of company parts. It featured Currie High Pinion 9-inch Ford front and rear differentials, a triangulated rear suspension design with Johnny Joint control arms both front and rear, and the newly developed Antirock sway bar. Rocky came in second, losing to Jeff "Rookie" Waggoner in his Currieequipped CJ.
Rocky Road was replaced by a new TJ Wrangler, Fire Ant, for the 2001 sea- MARCH 2007 61 "The biggest mistake people make is they don't think ahead." son. This TJ could have crawled straight out of the Grand Canyon with a Grand Cherokee 4.7-liter V8, Atlas II transfer case, triangulated rear suspension with the latest Johnny Joint J-arms, front and rear coil-over shocks, a reverse rotation Dana 60 rearend, Currie's High Pinion 9- inch front end equipped with F-450-style one-ton knuckles and 37- inch Goodyear MTR tires. The Fire Ant won the 2001 National Championship. In 2002, John teamed up with "Rookie" in the ARCA series and finished second in overall points.
Currie Enterprises now sponsors crawlers like Shannon Campbell and Mitch Guthrie. John follows the sport as an ESPN2 commentator. Meanwhile the third generation of Curries are now trying their hand at four wheeling in venues like JeepSpeed.
Now to the products that took Rocky Road and Fire Ant over boulders and into the winner's circle. First, front and rear axles. You can order custom units to your specific application, or you can opt for a Currie package. The company catalog includes three examples of its off-road front and rear axles - not so much as "packages," but as a sampling of what options and pricing are available, depending on where the end user wants to go. Specifically designed for Jeeps, the RockJock units are all high pinion, providing greater clearance and, more importantly, providing less of a driveline angle for easier, truer handling. If you want to go all out, you can opt for the Impact Series, both front and rear.
The options in the catalog read like a must-have for the hard core: a 60 aluminum housing with three-inch tubes, one-ton unit bearing floater-style housing ends, aluminum yokes and covers, heavy duty Johnny Joint suspension brackets, 35- spline 4340 chrome moly full floater style axles, Warn premium manual locking hubs, 12.5-inch Wilwood brake kits, 4.56 gears and Detroit Locker differentials. Hi-Pinion and 9-inch Ford front and rearends and Currie-built Dana 44s are also available with multiple options and build-ups for them as well.
If all this is too mind boggling, the company offers crate axles available "off-the-shelf" with many of the features of the custom applications. These are heavy-duty units for some of the more popular 4x4 rigs - Jeeps, Broncos, and Chevy S- 10s as well as universal packages.
In the late 1980s, Currie branched out into suspensions and body protection for 4x4s. The Johnny Joint system for a Jeep TJ replaces all eight stock control arms, provides a fourinch lift and is set up for solid performance over the most grueling off-road conditions. The "Joint" itself is a suspension ball joint with the articulation capabilities of a Heim joint and the insulating qualities of a conventional bushing.
The complete system includes control arms, front and rear track bars, polyurethane bump stops, four Rancho RS9000 shocks, a Currie Antirock front sway bar or optional sway bar disconnects. The Antirock sway bar improves traction by distributing weight over all four tires. All these components are also available separately.
According to Currie, little changes to a vehicle's set-up can result in dramatic improvements. He cites the leveling kit the company is developing for the new Jeep JK, It allows for 25 percent more travel, both front and rear, with only a two-inch lift.
Currie Enterprises' body protection includes a front bumper system made of heavy-gauge steel with a V-shaped front face and angled deflection ends. The bottom is angled to function as a skid plate. Other bolt-on accessories include high and low guards with winch fairlead mounts, a grille guard surround hoop and a steering box skid plate. The RockCrawler II line of rear bumpers come with tire carriers. Currie's rocker panels come in either the traditional flat steel plates, or with Rock Ribz 1.5-inch DOM tubing that extends three inches from the body, welded to 10-gauge panels. The Ribz provide underbody protection all the way to the frame. The tubing is tough enough to be used as a jack point for a high-lift jack
Currie Enterprises isn't resting on its rearends, though. This summer the company will move into a 45,000- square-foot facility and the engineers are working on suspension systems and body protection, as well as front and rear axles for Jeep's new JK.
"We put as much as we can into each product," explains Currie. "Our attitude is if we wouldn't put a product on our own vehicles, we won't make it. We make sure every product has real offroad value." 'Nuff said.
View a complete listing of Currie products online, or to order by phone call 4 Wheel Parts at 800-284-9840.
