They recommend only light/moderate throttle during the first 50 miles.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to really get through that initial 50 miles right away...

They also recommend a minimum 2" lift "for best results". I was caught off guard a bit because this was never mentioned to me. I didn't know until I saw it in the install guide. I have a completely stock Jeep. I had the turbo kit already, and I wasn't going to just return it and abort the install now. I was committed already. I have, of course, recommended to Prodigy that they begin to be more proactive at communicating this recommendation. Prodigy says that their Jeep is doing fine with only a 3/4" spacer lift and that it should be enough lift for me, but the official recommendation remains 2" minimum.

So I have the turbo installed, but no lift kit yet. I thought I could do some test driving while waiting for my Daystar 3/4" lift to arrive later this week. I quickly learned that street driving without any lift at all is a bad idea. Medium bumps (relative to Michigan road bumps) and moderate braking cause the front driveshaft to contact the downpipe. Prodigy has suggested that I could gain a little more clearance by pushing the exhaust pipes in the desired direction while all exhaust bolts are loose, and continue holding while the bolts are tightened.

Again, there's some wiggle room that could have given me a bit more clearance if I was thinking about it at the time I tightened everything, but from where things stand on my jeep right now, this is what I observe: When someone stands on the front bumper and bounces the suspension, I can see the front jounce bumper (yellow squishy thing inside the spring) contact the bump stop and just about the same time I hear the clink of the driveshaft touching the downpipe. The jounce bumper is capable of full compression before a hard bottoming out of the suspension. This means I need a bump stop extension at least as long as the jounce bumper to prevent damage to the downpipe under full suspension compression. I measured the jounce bumper at about 1.75". A 2" bump stop extension would give me about 0.25" clearance under absolute maximum physically possible compression. No sense only installing a bump stop extension, so a 2"+ lift with 2"+ bump stop extension makes sense (NOTE: the bump stop extensions are the important part to absolutely guarantee no clearance issues!)

Based on these observations/measurements, I am not comfortable with trying only a 3/4" lift. I want to be 100% sure that I will never have any contact, even when I accidentally drive over the top of a sand dune a bit to fast and catch some air.

I'm picking up the AEV 2" spacer lift kit tomorrow (I'm conveniently only a 15 minute drive away from their office/warehouse, so it's kinda like getting free overnight shipping!). I have a dentist appointment tomorrow after work, and it's supposed to rain on Wednesday. I'll probably install one axle Thursday evening and the other Friday evening so I can finally start some real driving this weekend (including a Sunday trip to an ORV park for off-road testing!)

I was too late on canceling my order for the 3/4" lift, so I have to hope that either my wife or I are home to refuse delivery when it arrives so I can avoid paying for return shipping.

I withheld this info while I worked through the details and my solution to avoid useless emotional ranting. I was mentally and physically exhausted at the time I was initially working through all of this. It would not have been pretty or productive for me to post about it at the time.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm not too bothered about being somewhat forced into a 2" lift (wasn't really forced, because I could have returned the kit when I learned about the recommendation if I really wanted to). I eventually want about a 2" lift and 33" Duratracs anyway. The inconvenience is that I won't be able to afford the tires/wheels for another year or two. I'll have to get used to my jeep looking like this for a while:



I'll get used to it. I can't see the tires from the driver's seat, but I sure can feel and hear the turbo
Looking forward to some worry-free driving this weekend!