Jeep JK Tech

A little over 5 years ago, Cindy and I had Moby’s suspension upgraded from the Gen 1 EVO Coil Over kit to a full blown […]

After Dynomax announced the release of their all new QuietCrawler Performance Exhaust System earlier this year and noted that it was “specifically designed to provide high clearance for rockcrawling and quiet acoustics for everyday driving in your 3.6L Jeep Wrangler 4 door”, we knew it was something we had to try.

Before heading back for home, Cindy started to do some research and found that a P06dd is a code that is thrown when your oil pressure is too low.

When we bought our 2012 Jeep JK Wrangler, we had always planned to upgrade it’s axles to a set of Dynatrac ProRock 60’s. Of course, being that money doesn’t grow on trees, we decided to use the time until we could afford the upgrade to extensively test just how well a set of 37″ tires would do with the new 3.6L Pentastar motor running factory 4.10 gears. For almost 2 years, we took our Jeep just about everywhere we could, driving it to and from the trail, on the highway and around town, up and over mountains, hard and fast through the Mojave Desert, up and over steep ledges in Moab and, crawling it over big rocks on trails like the Rubicon. And, after racking up over 45,000 miles on the odometer, what I can tell you is this… it can be done and it does work surprisingly, okay. For someone who’s never driven a re-geared equivalent, they may not even know what they’re missing.

I know it’s all the rage to beef up a factory axle housing when planning to run bigger tires but, I can assure you that well before you’ll ever come close to breaking a housing, you’re almost certainly break a factory front axle shaft.

I always hear people talk about how much the factory skidplates suck, how inadequate they are and how important it is to install heavy and expensive aftermarket replacements. And, truth be told, I just don’t get it. I mean, I’m totally on board with protecting vital parts on your Jeep that come with little to no protection at all, such as the oil pan on all JK’s, the automatic transmisson sump pan on 2011-up JK’s and even a very exposed transmission cooler line on 2012-up, but I simply have not seen any need to replace what you already get for free from the factory.

I just wanted to post this up as a public service announcement as I get 2012 owners asking me this question all the time. If you lift your 2012 Jeep JK Wrangler more than 2.5″, you will have issues with your factory front drive shaft making contact with the exhaust cross over. However, rather than wasting your money on a Y-Pipe kit that can cost upwards of $300, please do yourself a favor, spend the extra $150 and just upgrade your front drive shaft to a 1310 drive shaft like the kind that J.E. Reel or even Coast makes.