BDS Suspension Blog

BDS Suspension sales rep Jason Shellhaas just cruised back into town from a road trip around the Pacific Northwest visiting some of our great distributors and getting involved with a couple events. Along the way we saw a number of BDS distributors including Street To Sand in Nevada, Advantage Tire, Gresham 4wd and Bend Truck Toys in Oregon, Body Armor and Rockridge 4WD in Washington and Jack-It and Fat Bob’s Garage in Utah.

Along the way, Jason hung out with Randy and the rest of the crew over at Street to Sand Offroad during the 2013 Reno Offroad Expo. This is the 6th year for the Reno expo, and turnout improves every year as more people hear about the event. S2S had a great booth with a number of SEMA worthy and magazine featured trucks on display, sand rails, side-by-sides and other cool rigs.

After driving all the way around the Great Basin, Jason ended up back in Salt Lake City, where he teamed up with Fat Bob’s Garage for their first annual open house at their new Layton, Utah location. Over 200 people came out in the rain to show off rigs from vintage Land Rovers and Scouts to the new JKs, Toyotas and competition rock buggies. Hotdogs, drinks, live music and a great raffle featuring BDS Giveaways topped off an event that included show-n-shine competition, RTI ramp and truck teeter totter challenge and best of all was a crawl drag race that was won with a time of 5 minutes and 56 seconds to crawl 100 feet!

Jason came back saying it was a great trip, he enjoyed meeting up with some of our amazing customers  and checking out some of the most incredible scenery from around the country.

Here are some photos from his trip…

Since our last update, our mighty little Project KJ went on a diet shedding excess unibody and bulky fuel tank as the guys prep for mounting the new steering, suspension, axles and 40” tires. After stripping down the front bumper support, inner fenders and firewall, we’re making progress towards our small lift/big tires goal. The stripped unibody looks very similar to a frame rail allowing us to tie in the cage, suspension mounts, and mount a steering box up front. Our plan is to run a OE style box with hydro assist for easy turning in precarious situations offroad. Which steering box setup will best suit the build and our limited space constraints… stay tuned for more information as we figure that out.

For axles, we wanted to go with an attainable axle and show it can be built to handle some abuse. We picked up a set of JK Rubicon Dana 44s and are in the process of building them up. After cutting off the brackets, the axles received an outer sleeve and brackets were tacked in place as we figure out the suspension geometry. The JK 44s have a WMS of 65”, 3” wider than the KJ (and TJs) 62” width. This additional width will help give us additional room to mount the coil-overs, steering, and allow the 40s to turn lock-to-lock.  The housing on the front D44 fits tightly between the engine and “frame” rail at full compression making it ideal for us to achieve a low center of gravity. There is a slight interference with the mechanical fan, which will be resolved by swapping to an electric unit.

In the rear, the unibody has been cut to roughly the shape we need to extend the wheelbase and clear the 40s with minimal lift. The rear corner is an important structural part of the KJ’s unibody so rather than hack it up and potentially tweak the body, we are moving to the interior as we mock up the cage to provide additional support and rigidity. We’ll have more on the cage as the guys build it into the little KJ. Stay tuned for more as the guys continue to turn this little Liberty into an ultra cool low-slung trail buggy to take on the Petersen’s 4Wheel & Off-Road Ultimate Adventure 2013.

To check out past updates from this build, head to Project KJ.

Video update Number 3: http://youtu.be/wtTp0aEzWMg

Follow along and join the discussion on Facebook, YouTube, BDS Blog, LostJeeps Forum, and JeepKJ Forum.

What a week out in the red rocks of Moab, UT. Good weather, great people, and plenty of 4-wheeling as the Red Rock 4Wheeler Club hosted their 47th Annual Easter Jeep Safari March 23-31, 2013. What started as a small pre-Easter gathering of friends years ago has grown into the annual must-see industry event. Thousands of Jeeps, buggies, and side-by-sides converging on the small town of Moab for a 8 days of trails, parties, and a 2 day vendor show just outside of town. Vendors from around the country make the trip to Moab and Jeep debuts a number of concept vehicles each year. The club does a great job of organizing the event and always concludes with a vendor sponsored raffle drawing, this year with more that $150,000 worth of prizes handed out to the crowd. BDS used this event as an opportunity to announce the release of new forged flex end options and Clevite rubber bushings standard in all Jeep control arms. Throughout the week the guys from BDS hit the trails and offered up coupons good for a free pint of beer from the Moab Brewery with nearly 500 handed out. To everyone that made it by the booth to say hi, we sincerely appreciate it. Check out the pictures on Facebook.

While we’ve been out playing in Moab all week, BDS R&D has been busy working on Project KJ, the 2005 Jeep Liberty (KJ) CRD we’re building to take on the 2013 Ultimate Adventure. If this is the first you’re reading about this build, check out Project KJ Blog for more info on this project and to get up to speed.

To make room for the massive tires we plan to run on this Liberty, we needed to make some room in the fenderwells. Starting with the front the inner fender was trimmed as we prepped a set of JK Rubicon Dana 44 axles with our mock up tires, 40” Maxxis Trepadors in place to get an idea of rides height, and full compression so we can begin designing the suspension for this little CRD powered Jeep. The plan is to keep the Jeep as low as possible, potentially running 3-4” of lift with plenty of droop from a multilink suspension and Fox coilovers. Stay tuned for more in the coming days as the guys continue to prep this KJ.