Ya I agree I think this is a healthy balance before risking your rack. I’d like to complete the rubicon but waiting till I get thru these 35s and can upgrade to 37 or 38
Which version steel or aluminum did you get on the control arms and traq bar?Heyo! Here's a pile of pics and blurbs regarding my 2021 Badlands Sasquatch.
Latest Look (September 28, 2023)
Mods
Milestar Patagonia MT 02 Tires in 37x12.5R17 size.
These tires are great and inexpensive for their size and capability. On top of that, Discount Tire pricematched a sale price I found on Amazon for $268 per tire. I felt lucky and happy about that. These were at the top of my list also because they are only 74 lbs, which is pretty dang good for a full 37" mud tire. So far they're good, but as of this moment they are about 5 days old. There is minor rubbing at full lock and under some compression. I think it's contacting the front of the rock rail, so I may see about trimming that back a little bit. As far as I've seen so far, it doesn't rub on the frame. I will, however, be testing this out further in the next few days.I like the tread pattern both visually and functionally. The noise is (as expected) louder than the stock Goodyear Territory MTs, but it's completely tolerable for such an aggressive tread. I'll have it on the trails soon and will report back on how they do there.
GFX TR-16 17x19 0 offset matte black wheels
These are some cheap ($146 per wheel) but perfect wheels. I wanted these exact dimensions and pretty much this exact look. They're also 30 lbs, which is a helpful 5lb weight reduction from the stock sasquatch wheels.Fox 2.5 Performance Elite Coilovers
I'm loving these so far. They feel very good, and I like playing with the dual speed compression adjusters. I got them from Stage 3 Motorsports for about $4100. I don't feel like I need to say much about them, but Accutune recently posted a good video talking about these vs Kings. It (and others) can serve as good info about 'em until I have some more time with them.Icon front tubular UCAs
I went with these particular UCAs due to the good balance of quality and price. I think I got them for about $750 from Stage 3 Motorsports. I had no desire to splurge for billet aluminum (no qualms with those folks who do go that route), and I think this looks great. The geometry is looking very good so far.Core4x4 Rear Arms and Trac Bar
Love these. They are strong as hell and made by a small shop that is a joy to work with. Got the whole set for about $1000. The use of Johnny Joints is very appealing. Note that they let you pick from a wide range of colors. I went with green, and they look great.
Everglades snorkel
I've got a whole other thread dedicated to the snorkel adventure. You can find a fully itemized parts and price list there as well as a lot of pics and discussion. Total parts cost of about $1100.JKS Tie Rod Sleeves
I wanted a mild strength improvement to the tie rods. Enough to gently beef them up while trying to still keep the tie rods as a failure point prior to the steering rack. $50 makes it an easy add. The Milestar 37" tires and the GFX 17x9" wheels add up to about 104 lbs (from their spec sheet. I'd like to weigh my spare to verify). That puts them at about a 14 lb increase over stock sasquatch wheel + tire (35 + 55). I'm hoping the sleeves will sufficiently account for that.Rough Country Rack & Pinion Bushing Kit
In conjunction with the JKS sleeves, I just want to adjust things so that their breaking points are (hopefully) about the same as stock with 35" tires. We'll see how it goes. Another $50 item.Cheap random sidesteps from Amazon
$150 for the whole dang set of 4. Hell yeah.DV8 MTO Front Bumper
It was early days and there wasn't much available in the way of hidden winch bumpers. At that time, I don't think anyone had devised a front camera relocation kit, so I was stuck on the idea of hiding the winch low. I ended up with this chonky DV8 bumper, which.... is fine. But I have aspirations of replacing it with something slimmer. It was about $1100 direct from DV8.DV8 Pocket Fairlead
I got it for $150, which was $100 off from the usual $250 price. That was my primary incentive to purchase it. It has great build quality, functions very well, and the hook is great. I just feel like the silver mesh aesthetic on it is too messy. Honestly combining that with the MTO bumper's own mesh aesthetic and the frontend has gotten too cluttered. I'll be playing with this sometime soon, I think. I also need to clean up the rust around the bolts and swap in others. Those are not the bolts that came with the fairlead, so don't blame DV8 for that.
Smittybilt XRC Gen3 12k Winch
It has served me very well, and I like the wireless remote. The synthetic line it comes with is decent and has held up well. I think it was about $750 from 4WP. If I have to replace it, though, I'm going to go with an Apex Badlands. No sense in doubling the price when it will perform the same.Recovery Gear
Rhino USA tree strap, soft shackles, kinetic rope, and bow shackles
The shackles and tree strap have worked very well when I've used them. Haven't had to use the tow rope yet, but it's a 7/8" x 20' variant and was $105. The tree strap is 4" x 10' and was $30. The soft shackles are 1/2" x 22" and were $35 each, but it looks like you can now get a 2-pack for $60.Factor 55 Rope Retention Pulley
Love this thing. Excellent quality and I like the rope retention pokey things that help keep the winch line against the pulley while slack. $115 is steep for such a simple thing, but it's top shelf quality.
Original Look (August 4, 2021)
Thanks, friend! Love that Bison's look. Super cool truck. I mean of course I prefer your Bronco, but the Bison is great too.Pandapaul that's an awesome setup! I love the snorkel but my family complained relentlessly about the snorkel on my 2020 Colorado ZR2 Bison diesel that I traded for my 23BB. I'm also not a fan of the snorkel taking up real estate that would otherwise be used for "ditch" lights but I still love it.
The specific set I went with is their camp series kit for '21-'23 broncos.
Your build looks awesome. one question. I have the same UCAs, do you hear them making like a noise when your body flexes or like driving over speedbumps? I know mine have plenty of grease, but I still hear that like squeaking noise. Thanks.Heyo! Here's a pile of pics and blurbs regarding my 2021 Badlands Sasquatch with the 2.7L V6.
Latest Look (September 28, 2023)
Mods
Milestar Patagonia MT 02 Tires in 37x12.5R17 size.
These tires are great and inexpensive for their size and capability. On top of that, Discount Tire pricematched a sale price I found on Amazon for $268 per tire. I felt lucky and happy about that. These were at the top of my list also because they are only 74 lbs, which is pretty dang good for a full 37" mud tire. So far they're good, but as of this moment they are about 5 days old. There is minor rubbing at full lock and under some compression. I think it's contacting the front of the rock rail, so I may see about trimming that back a little bit. As far as I've seen so far, it doesn't rub on the frame. I will, however, be testing this out further in the next few days.I like the tread pattern both visually and functionally. The noise is (as expected) louder than the stock Goodyear Territory MTs, but it's completely tolerable for such an aggressive tread. I'll have it on the trails soon and will report back on how they do there.
GFX TR-16 17x19 0 offset matte black wheels
These are some cheap ($146 per wheel) but perfect wheels. I wanted these exact dimensions and pretty much this exact look. They're also 30 lbs, which is a helpful 5lb weight reduction from the stock sasquatch wheels.Fox 2.5 Performance Elite Coilovers
I'm loving these so far. They feel very good, and I like playing with the dual speed compression adjusters. I got them from Stage 3 Motorsports for about $4100. I don't feel like I need to say much about them, but Accutune recently posted a good video talking about these vs Kings. It (and others) can serve as good info about 'em until I have some more time with them.Icon front tubular UCAs
I went with these particular UCAs due to the good balance of quality and price. I think I got them for about $750 from Stage 3 Motorsports. I had no desire to splurge for billet aluminum (no qualms with those folks who do go that route), and I think this looks great. The geometry is looking alright so far but needs to be evaluated while articulating.Core4x4 Camp Series Rear Arms and Trac Bar
Love these. They are strong as hell and made by a small shop that is a joy to work with. Got the whole set for about $1000. The use of Johnny Joints is very appealing. Note that they let you pick from a wide range of colors. I went with green, and they look great.Everglades snorkel
I've got a whole other thread dedicated to the snorkel adventure. You can find a fully itemized parts and price list there as well as a lot of pics and discussion. Total parts cost of about $1100.JKS Tie Rod Sleeves
I wanted a mild strength improvement to the tie rods. Enough to gently beef them up while trying to still keep the tie rods as a failure point prior to the steering rack. $50 makes it an easy add. The Milestar 37" tires and the GFX 17x9" wheels add up to about 104 lbs (from their spec sheet. I'd like to weigh my spare to verify). That puts them at about a 14 lb increase over stock sasquatch wheel + tire (35 + 55). I'm hoping the sleeves will sufficiently account for that.Rough Country Rack & Pinion Bushing Kit
In conjunction with the JKS sleeves, I just want to adjust things so that their breaking points are (hopefully) about the same as stock with 35" tires. We'll see how it goes. Another $50 item.Cheap random sidesteps from Amazon
$150 for the whole dang set of 4. Hell yeah.DV8 MTO Front Bumper
It was early days and there wasn't much available in the way of hidden winch bumpers. At that time, I don't think anyone had devised a front camera relocation kit, so I was stuck on the idea of hiding the winch low. I ended up with this chonky DV8 bumper, which.... is fine. But I have aspirations of replacing it with something slimmer. It was about $1100 direct from DV8.DV8 Pocket Fairlead
I got it for $150, which was $100 off from the usual $250 price. That was my primary incentive to purchase it. It has great build quality, functions very well, and the hook is great. I just feel like the silver mesh aesthetic on it is too messy. Honestly combining that with the MTO bumper's own mesh aesthetic and the frontend has gotten too cluttered. I'll be playing with this sometime soon, I think. I also need to clean up the rust around the bolts and swap in others. Those are not the bolts that came with the fairlead, so don't blame DV8 for that.Smittybilt XRC Gen3 12k Winch
It has served me very well, and I like the wireless remote. The synthetic line it comes with is decent and has held up well. I think it was about $750 from 4WP. If I have to replace it, though, I'm going to go with an Apex Badlands. No sense in doubling the price when it will perform the same.
Recovery Gear
Rhino USA tree strap, soft shackles, kinetic rope, and bow shackles
The shackles and tree strap have worked very well when I've used them. Haven't had to use the tow rope yet, but it's a 7/8" x 20' variant and was $105. The tree strap is 4" x 10' and was $30. The soft shackles are 1/2" x 22" and were $35 each, but it looks like you can now get a 2-pack for $60.Factor 55 Rope Retention Pulley
Love this thing. Excellent quality and I like the rope retention pokey things that help keep the winch line against the pulley while slack. $115 is steep for such a simple thing, but it's top shelf quality.
Original Look (August 4, 2021)
Future Work
Extend the breather valve lines
This is an important one that I've been putting off. I go through a lot of water crossings, and the existing breather valves are bound to suck up some swamp water at some point if they haven't already. This should be an inexpensive project, I just have to get under the vehicle and plan things out properly. I might use the Everglades layout as a reference, but I might also run them higher up than that. As part of this, I should replace all the existing fluids for a fresh start.Seal the air intake a bit more
As it is, the Everglades snorkel is very good. I love the flippable plates and the relatively tidy design. It seals up the top of the airbox nicely. There are, however, a couple water entry points I'd like to address. For the drain hole at the bottom of the air box, I think it would be handy to have a removable plug. On road the drain would be open to allow small amounts of rain water and such to drain out. When crossing deep water off road, I'd plug it. The snorkel has a removable side plate at the fender, which I think is just there to make installation easier. I'd like to seal the side plate with some silicone or a decent gasket. There's also a small drain hole above the cowl, but I think that's high enough to leave it open. Adding a gasket around the blocking plate could be nice, but it's lower priority as long as the air box drain plug is removable.Grille letters
If I can settle on a six letter name for the vehicle (or just use "PANDAS"), I'd love to swap the front "BRONCO" letters out for that name. Oracle sells custom ones that are lit, but I don't really care about the lighting. I'd rather focus on making them colorful with or without light.Bumper update
The more I look at it, the less I like the DV8 MTO chonker bumper. I don't want to spend thousands on another bumper when it's completely unnecessary, though, so I might talk to one of my family members who is a welder. Maybe he and I could put together a small, simple solution. In the mean time, maybe I'll store the bow shackles in the cabin and repaint the mesh plates to tidy it up.Air compressor
I just need to buy a decent one. Maybe I'll mount it somewhere clever, but maybe not.Tire deflator
Small thing I just need to buy so that I can take advantage of the milestars properly.Inspect things at full droop and full stuff
May need to make some adjustments to the suspension and/or do some trimming.Deal with rub
I've observed minor rub at full lock that needs to be addressed. I think it's collision with the front of the rock rails, so maybe I'll trim those back a little.
I haven't yet, but they're only a few days old. I will definitely keep an ear out for that and report back if I hear it. I just got the front drive shaft replaced per a recall, and that has (I think/hope) gotten rid of one awful squeaking noise that I had for a year or more.
The range of adjustment on the Fox shocks is pretty broad. I'm still dialing it in to what I'll settle on for daily driving, but overall the comfort and handling of this setup feels better than the sasquatch stock. That said, I really want to get my wife behind the wheel for a less biased perspective.
I'll have a look over the next week and let you know. But I'll warn that my mileage was on the low end even when stock.
Hey Bob! Yeah that's the OEM steel one. It is indeed mostly steel but with a plastic cover across the top. A good thing for someone (like me) who loads and unloads things without paying much attention. I've got no complaints about it. The plastic clips that hold in the license plate assembly ripped off on one of my early off road adventures, but a couple zip ties solved that problem sufficiently. If I were in the market for a bumper, I'd say just pick whichever one calls to you and has good rear recovery points. That and keep in mind that some may require relocation of the license plate for better or worse.
