Fit'n 35's

[Old Dog]

I'm in the middle of putting 35x13.5x15 claws on 10" wide beadlocks with 3 1/4" backspacing on my jeep. Some members have bee asking about trimming the fender wells, so I thought I'd put some pix of what I'm having to do to make them fit. I also have bestop cj flairs that I wanted to keep for the round opening look.
I just got done with the rear, and it seems like it's going to be ok.
I had some tj flares here, so I traced their opening on the body and trimed to the line. Than used the cutout piece to mark the flairs and cut them.
heres some pix of the progress so far.

 

[Old Dog]

The front is going to need more trimming than I thought. I'm going to try to work on that today. As you can see in the pix it's going to hit when I turn the wheel. I have a line drawn on that I'm going to trim to and see what happens. I hope this is going to be enough as thats where my inner fenderwell is.

 

[Old Dog]

I guess I should tell everyone that I have a 4" lift and a 1" BL with stock lenght shackles. I also have a fiberglass body but the wheel openings seem to be the same size and location as stock cj's.
Here's a pix. of it setting in the driveway with the 35's.

 

[Old Dog]

Anyone else here that has had to trim to fit bigger tires please feel free to post up some pix of what you had to do.

 

[CJim7]

Anyone else here that has had to trim to fit bigger tires please feel free to post up some pix of what you had to do.

I'll have to work on some pics for you...but I still have some trimming to do, the tires rub the fender wells at full articulation. Keep in mind Im running 36's on 4½ inches of lift.
Im going to have to cut and remove or massage the inner fender some.

I went complete flat fenders....its the inner well that's the problem.

 

[Old Dog]

Well, I cut the front back to the inner fenderwells and I might have 1/4" clearance with the bumpstop just touching. Just not a safe enough margin for me. It's time to drop the front bumpstop an inch for now. Might have to do something different in the future.

 

[Old Dog]

CJim7, please post up when you get it done. There is always someone here trying to fit large tires. I'm hoping this thread will help them.

 

[mylittlecj5]

Looks like a good job! thanks for the pics.

I would post mine up, but I have a shackle reversal on mine that wasn't done "correct", so I had to cut out a lot more in front than most people after i bought the CJ. One of these days i might get around to fixing this and a few other minor issues.

 

[Old Dog]

mylittlecj, you and busadave might want to let people know (see) what they are getting into when they go shackle reversal.

 

[Sasquach]

Them some serious meats Old Dog! Looks good too.

 

[BusaDave9]

Here's my '79 CJ5 the day I bought it.

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I took this picture before I even got it home. I took the long way home over the mountain trails (2 day trip). When I bought it the PO installed a Shackle Reversal and 35 inch BFG tires.The fenders acted as bump stops. It wasn't too bad on level ground but when the suspension would articulate it would sound like the tires were tearing apart the fenders, especially the front.
At the risk of sidetracking this thread, the next day after getting my Jeep home I looked out the window at my newly purchased CJ and thought to myself "I know I had a spare when I bought that jeep." Sure enough, the spare tire mount that the PO welded on broke off before I got home. I reviewed the pictures I took to help figure out where I lost my tire and I headed back out on the trails. I found my spare and threw it in the back seat to head home.
One of the first things I did to my Cj was cut the fenders. I didn't want to raise it any more. I like to keep my Jeep as low as possible but still have good suspension travel and articulation.
Here is how it looked when the suspension is compressed. This was shot after doing some fender cutting.

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The problem was the Shackle Reversal. This caused the front tires to move back as the suspension compressed. You can see in the above picture the tire still pressed against the inner fender and the nerf bar. If I were also to turn to the right then the tire would really grind against the nerf bar so it had to go. I got rock sliders instead.
Here's how it looked on level ground:

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By comparing the 2 pictures above you can see how far back the tires go as the suspension compresses. I thought the new rock sliders would give plenty of room for the tire as the suspension articulates. I was wrong. I still had to do some cutting to prevent my CJ from destroying itself when it goes over bumps. I would drive my Jeep into a ditch to put all the weight on 2 opposite corners to see how any tire rubbing would occur.

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You can see I have some pretty good articulation. The biggest problem with my suspension was the shackle reversal caused the front axle to move back as the tires would go over bumps.
I also had to cut the inner fender wells. I slit and flared the inner fenders by adding sheet metal.
As the axle would move back it presses the shock into the steering knuckle until the shock broke. The fix for this would be to move the shock tower back. I used a ford shock tower but I cut the base and had a friend weld it. I also raised the top of the shock in the process. Here is the end result.

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My new shocks were Doetsch Tech Shocks with an offset eyelet.

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The above picture is up side down. I put the offset end at the bottom so the shock could clear the axle tube as the suspension would compress.
I also needed to add bump stops to prevent the tires from doing any damage to the fenders (and vise versa).

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When it came time to get new tires I decided to get SuperSwamper SX Bias Ply tires. I think Bias Ply are better for off road. The sidewalls are as tough as the tread and they flex better. On the other hand they are worse on road.
The only size of SuperSwampers I could get was 36x12.5-15. It was a little bigger than I wanted but only one inch bigger diameter than my old tires. The specs implied it was just as wide as my older tires (12.5 inches). WRONG. the new tires were much wider than my old. The reason was the Bias Ply tires had a lot more sidewall bulge. Here are my old BFG Mud Terrain

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And here are my new SuperSwamper SX Bias Ply Tires

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They were so wide they rubbed the spring and inner fender well. I usually don't like wheel spacers because they add more strain to the ball joints but I decided to get a set anyway. I am glad I did. They helped out alot and gave my CJ a more stable stance.
Once again I took my CJ out to check wheel travel.
Here is the right rear tire compressed.

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Here is the front left tire compressed.

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I had more cutting to do.
Here is how the front fender looks today

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You can see how I cut and flared the inner fenders. I moved the back of the inner fenders to the rear and added sheet metal where I flared the fender. I also added sheet metal just behind the front tires. With oversized tires mud and water flings strait up onto my battery and electrical connections. That is why I added the sheet metal behind the front tires as you can see in the above picture.
With the shackle reversal and springs that have a lot of arch that causes the front tires to move back almost as much as they move up. You can see from my pictures I would have plenty of clearance if the tires only went up and down.

 

[CJim7]

this was before any serious fender trimming...other then flat fendering. Yes it rubbed like crazy, did I care? Not really

This is also before I installed the full boatsides. That allowed me to cut out almost 5 inches just behind the front tire.