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Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six<- You are here
Part Seven
Part Eight
11. Battery
- Dual Battery Setup by MAF
I have an increasing amount of stuff driven off my battery. Mostly a lot of lights, navigation system, laptop - and I also wanted to be able to run stuff while camping. I played with a number of wiring options for the truck, including one involving a marine isolator. This ended up causing a low voltage warning when starting the truck - and even though it never caused problems, I got worried enough that we went a different way with the setup. What I now have is a tried-and-true
MAF dual battery setup involving a custom battery tray / mount. The need for this latter detail evolved from that fact that the compressor had already snagged the good second battery spot on the driver side wheel well. Instead, my dual
Optima yellow batteries sit side-by-side in the old stock battery slot. The starter and auxiliary equipment are driven off separate batteries.
IMAGE-> My dual battery setup, located in the front, right of engine compartment (passenger side).
IMAGE-> Wider context shot of the dual battery setup.
12. Wheels, Tires, and Brakes
- The Problem with Stock Bridgestone Duelers
My plan with wheels and tires has always been to have one set of mixed use (street and light trails) and one set of heavy duty designed for the most serious trails, but such that I could drive to the trails with them on. The stock Duelers are fine tires, but they're not the greatest for grip on trails. On rocks, they positively suck, sliding and skipping all over the place, nearly zero grip (hey, they were designed for streets, not offroading, it makes sense, but it's not what I want). I very recently gave my stock wheels and tires to my brother to put on his 1995 4Runner. The center caps don't work with the FJC alloy wheels on the 4Runner hubs, but when they're popped off, they work great.
- The MasterPlan: All-Terrains and Full-On Rock Crawlers
I decided what I want is two sets of tires/wheels. The first would be general purpose ("all terrain", if you will). These would be used for street driving and light trails. The second would be full-on rock crawling / heavy duty trails tires.
- BF Goodrich All Terrains
For the AT's, I went with
295/75-R16 BFG AT's. These have an overall diameter of roughly 33". This choice (made early on in my FJC life) was based on the fact that my buddy thought they looked cool. Having spoken with various people (and mainly Larry of "uphill" fame), I think I would now go with some of the more modern, computer-designed treat pattern AT's. That said, the BFG AT's have been fine, and I've rock crawled many places with them.
IMAGE-> Reasonably close-up look at the BFG AT's mounted on 16" ProComp "street lock" 152 rims.
- ProComp "Street Lock" Wheels
I ended up really liking the
ProComp 152 series black "street lock" rims. I got them in 16x8" with a 4.25" back spacing (BS). The problem is, these rims do not fit over the brake calipers. I thought about changing them out for a rim that will fit, but instead thought I'd try some spacers.
- SpiderTrax Wheel Spacers
I decided to go with some
SpiderTrax wheel spacers. These are really nice in that they provide a whole new set of wheel studs/bolts, rather than shortening the ones on the hub. There is no reason why this type of spacer would behave any differently from an equivalently backspaced wheel, with the exception that there are now two sets of studs/bolts that can break and then there is the actual material strength of the spacers. These seem at least as strong as wheel material, and my guess is that despite squeamishness over spacers in general, these suckers are going to be problem-free.
- Body Mount Chop and "Plastic Surgery"
At 1.25", the wheel spacers make the wheels step out quite a bit from the truck. With these on, they effectively make the tires 15" wide (2.5" for the spacer (mirror about the hub) plus 12.5" for the tire). Since 2.5" of those inches are "virtual" on the inside of the wheel, there's no UCA rub problems or anything like that. But as you can imagine for an effectively 15" tire, the outside rub on the fenders and wheel well on maximum stuff and/or maximum turn is quite impressive. The body mount has been chopped, much of the plastic trim on the fenders has been removed, mud guards have been removed, and the metal seam along the inside of the wheel wells has been folded over. I've done pretty nasty trails with the AT's on the spacers, and i've not (yet) had any problems.
IMAGE-> With the wheel off, you can see the 1.25" SpiderTrax spacers as the blue disks sitting on the wheel mounting plane.
- Pitbull Rocker Tires
I've seen many mud tires and serious crawling tires. I had originally pined for the BFG Krawlers, but the 35" only comes in 15" rim fit, and the 37" just didn't seem the way to go for what I wanted to do, despite the fact that Ryan has managed to squeeze them under an FJC already. After some searching, and some desire to do something novel, I came across the PitBull Rockers. These get excellent offroad / rock / dirt trail reviews and they look awesome. My heart was sold on the Rockers, all that was left in the air now was how to mount them and what size to get.
- Stazworks Dual Beadlock Wheels
For my super-aggressive tires, I wanted to get rims that trap the bead of the tire so I can airdown super-low. It is debatable how important locking the bead for tires of the 33-35" range on 17" wheels, but what the hey. Also, again, I wanted to try something new for once. In any case, there are two options for bead-locking: the
traditional one-side beadlock and the
dual-style beadlocks that you see on H1 Hummers. You can also make a regular rim dual beadlock by using a
Staun inflatable internal beadlock. I ended up deciding to go with a two piece, dual beadlock rim made by
Stazworks. These rims
came in June and I messed around with two sizes of tires (effectively 33" and 35" OD - I
really wanted the 35"s...)
IMAGE-> Stazworks dual beadlock wheel being installed with a 33" Pitbull Rocker tire.
- What Size Tires Will Fit an FJC and What Does "Fit" Actually Mean?
As I said, I really wanted to get as large a tire as I could fit. But looking at experience on the forum, that word "fit" always seemed to be a loose, vague, fuzzy kind of a word. A kind of "truthiness" word. No, damn it, I'm an applied physics professional: Western civilization is based on quantitative measurement and theory, and we can measure tire fitment and make a quantitatively definite statement. I wanted to find out what size would be free of rub in all circumstances - and
so we got out a fork lift truck and starting pushing the truck over lifting various wheels and with differing amounts of front wheel turn. We had trimmed off the body mounts (very aggressively), beaten the wheel wells in, and taken off the plastic trim. So this is a limiting experiment. However, we found that at full compression, with the rear wheel way up in the air, and at full turn, even the 33" tire just about gets into contact with the frame. This is well inboard, so the bad news is that the result is independent of tire width or the presence of spacers behind my wheels. Many people with tires larger than 33" don't report rubbing, even during tough wheeling / rock crawling, which (thankfully) suggests that the extreme conditions we tested are rarely or only very briefly achieved "in the field". But the fact of the measurements we made is that anything bigger than 33"s will touch the frame even with
the most aggressive plastic trim and body mount chop. The trim and body mount chop I have, combined with the frame limitations found in the measurements also mean that tire width and wheel back spacing are not factors - so this most extreme limit on tire size "fit" cannot be solved by changing those things.
IMAGE-> The trim, body mounts, and wheel wells took a beating to maximize accommodatable tire size. Alas, the frame creates problems for tires larger than 33" for extreme stuff / turn 
- Mounting the PitBulls
I was bummed about my experimental results because I really wanted to put the just-a-bit-over 35" (labeled 37") Rockers on my truck. But it was not to be. I sadly ordered the 33"s since I didn't want to trash my articulation for the larger tire
.
The mounting of the tires on the Stazworks wheels is interesting. There is a vinyl (some synthetic, anyway) cylinder that inserts into the tire and provides the inside portion of the lock for the tire beads. This has to be centered pretty near perfectly for the tire to seat properly on the wheel. The two piece metal components of the wheels are sandwiched on either side of the tire center and trap the outside edges of the two beads. Thirty-two bolts hold the wheels together. Getting the two pieces to pull together requires a set of temporary, longer bolts/nuts (four used equally spaced around the wheel works well). These are tightened down until the shorter permanent bolts/nuts can be used. On my set, the stem valve hole is on the inside of the wheel mounting face, so it's going to be VERY well protected from rocks. I used some 45 degree angle metal stems.
- Tire and Wheel Weights
As a final note, this wheel and tire combo is heavy. I measured it at 115 lbs, to be compared with just over 65 lbs for my stock Duelers on the 17" alloy wheels, and 95 lbs for the AT's on the ProComps.
IMAGE-> Truck with Staz wheels and Pitbull tires (I).
IMAGE-> Truck with Staz wheels and Pitbull tires (II).
- Extended Brake Lines
Along with the 3" OME lift and the idea that I'd be putting the vehicle through end-to-end articulation frequently, we decided to put
extended brake lines on the truck. These suckers are also somewhat stronger than stock and less likely to stretch. So with all the extra weight, it seemed like a good idea.
- DBA Brake Disks
I also decided to upgrade the brakes. I have
DBA, 4000 Series, 6x6 slotted disks on the truck now.
IMAGE-> Slotted DBA brake disks.
- Green Stuff Brake Pads
Along with the new disks, I got hold of some
Green Stuff 6000 (rear) and 7000 (front) series brake pads. These are supposedly top-end brake pads, and seem to work very well after a few days driving on them.
IMAGE-> Green stuff pads seated in the brake calipers.
This post has eight parts. Click below to navigate:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six<- You are here
Part Seven
Part Eight
