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| Factory bump cushion retainer to be removed. |
Rubicon Express manufactures one of the best tried and proven Jeep JK suspensions distributed worldwide through aftermarket parts retailers and through Mopar at local Jeep dealerships, It's the only suspension to be approved by Mopar after the rigorous testing by engineers at the OEM level. The Mopar endorsement was not enough for the folks over at RE. Always striving to make their product offering even better, Rubicon's latest release is a combination of full bore off-road race technology meets daily driver. Here, we take a JK Wrangler fit with a Rubicon Express 4.5 Radius Long arm suspension, and equip it with the 2008 SEMA Show's Global Media award-winning Rubicon Express hydraulic bump stop kits.
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| Using a cut off wheel, cut around the circumference of the retainer, once removed grind the surface smooth. |
The relatively easy-to-install system features Light Racing Jounce Shocks that act as a secondary suspension for added bottom-out protection during hard impacts or landings and add stability in off-camber corners that are common with higher speed on and off-road driving. The system also adds an extra level of comfort and stability in slow-speed situations by virtually eliminating bottoming when dropping off of ledges and large boulders.
Included are a pair of meticulously designed billet aluminum mounts for the front that replace the factory bump stop tower, laser cut rear bracket mounts simply weld on in place of the factory rear bumps.
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| Using a sawzall cut thru the top welded portion of the spring tower to remove the center "jones tower" Grind both the top and bottom surface smooth after removal. |
Rubicon chose to use Light Racing's nitrogen gas charged bumps that have an impressive list of features including a fully serviceable and rebuildable body, externally adjustable compression and rebound controls, oil fill levels and nitrogen charge that allow for application specific tuning. From an over-packed rig to a stripped down racer the options are limitless just tune the bumps for the situation!
With the detailed instructions that are included with the kit, the installation just took a few hours and we had our JK equipped with the Rubicon hydraulic bumps and couldn't wait to get out and test them.
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| Drilling lower bump pad to accept bumpstop target pad. |
The on road handling in normal driving conditions felt un-affected until the road gets twisty and that's when you could really notice the added stability that makes the Jeep feel more like a sports car than a rock-crawler; enough of this on road stuff lets get to the fun part... We took our JK to the VORA track in Sacramento to do a little high speed, sideways driving to see how it could take the bumps and jumps at an off-road race track. The moment we hit the dirt, it was nothing but smiles; the vehicle handling made us feel like we were driving our own Trophy truck, ripping through corners and pitching it sideways
