A Hardcore OFFROAD Juke
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Ah yes, the Russian V8 Juke is back! That build turned out a lot cleaner than I expected. It's a shame the only place they could fit the radiator was the back seat.
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Hmm, but they went through all the trouble to swap the subframe out from an entirely different car, and didn't upgrade the suspension?
If that's the maximum droop for the front, that's pathetic, like that's probably about where my coilovers will get me, and I haven't even modified the control arms yet.
I guess Pathfinder suspension isn't really much of a step up from Juke suspension...
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IKR. I saw that and was like whaaattt ?![]()
Hmm, but they went through all the trouble to swap the subframe out from an entirely different car, and didn't upgrade the suspension?
If that's the maximum droop for the front, that's pathetic, like that's probably about where my coilovers will get me, and I haven't even modified the control arms yet.
I guess Pathfinder suspension isn't really much of a step up from Juke suspension...
I can handle the radiator.
Here ya go. On an SHO. LOL
Maybe you should go side exhaust.
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That must be a tight suspension with not much travel at all. Needs more gap! Wonder if they stick out any.
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Just wait until the Taurus starts phasing out of police use and the aftermarket is flooded with tons of cheap AWD sedans, THEN we'll see some crazy sh*t!IKR. I saw that and was like whaaattt ?
I can handle the radiator.
Here ya go. On an SHO. LOL
Maybe you should go side exhaust.
![]()
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Not once did the .kz tip me off to that. That probably explains why it's so well made though, if the Russians did it, it would probably be a heap of welded steel and all four wheels would probably be pointing different directions.
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353 Posts
Last week I was pretty sure I was gonna receive the coilovers before the end of the month, but I was on the phone with Silver's and the news is internally they are launching a bunch of new applications for their coilovers including lift kits for several vehicles. BUT that means that designs for my custom coils have been pushed back 2-3 weeks, adding about 2 weeks for confirmation, build and shipping time, they might not be here until June. That kinda sucks, I really didn't think this process was going to take over 2 months, especially since I'm not gonna be able to go to the Tampa meet with them installed- which would have been cool, but it's not the end of the world.
The very interesting thing is that it has come to my attention that there is another person who has already placed an order for the Juke lift. Which is actually super cool, because the only people I've told about it is here on the forum and one dude on youtube.
But that's also the reason my coils are delayed because Silver's is trying to make sure that the coilovers fit both our applications. So... less cool.
It makes me feel like I've actually added something significant to the forum and the Juke community because, other than what Nismo Offroad has posted, the coilover lift is very much uncharted territory; much less working with a manufacturer to create a custom application lift coilover- which to my knowledge hasn't been done for the Juke before now.
Working with Silver's has been great so far and the process has been pretty easy. I've called and emailed several times, and it seems like they only have one customer service person, and it also seems like a lot of the shop's work passes through him-- so shout out to Kris from Silver's for putting up with me and being super professional so far.
The very interesting thing is that it has come to my attention that there is another person who has already placed an order for the Juke lift. Which is actually super cool, because the only people I've told about it is here on the forum and one dude on youtube.
But that's also the reason my coils are delayed because Silver's is trying to make sure that the coilovers fit both our applications. So... less cool.
It makes me feel like I've actually added something significant to the forum and the Juke community because, other than what Nismo Offroad has posted, the coilover lift is very much uncharted territory; much less working with a manufacturer to create a custom application lift coilover- which to my knowledge hasn't been done for the Juke before now.
Working with Silver's has been great so far and the process has been pretty easy. I've called and emailed several times, and it seems like they only have one customer service person, and it also seems like a lot of the shop's work passes through him-- so shout out to Kris from Silver's for putting up with me and being super professional so far.
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353 Posts
Doing some more research for the 33" tires idea -- sure the Juke is handling fine on the '30s' I have on it, but I've been thinking about it a lot, since this is my daily driver I should probably put a little more effort into keeping it at least somewhat reliable if I'm going to go taller, wider and heavier. I'm starting to realize just how absurd it sounds to take a Juke from it's stock tire size all the way to 33s; most jeep wranglers come stock with 29s or 32s depending on trim, and if they go any higher than 35s they usually re-gear, and that's only a step up about 3".
The stock Juke has 27's (being generous), so a 33 big big step for this vehicle. With the increased drive ratio and the increased rotational mass, the next 3" step, while only another 3" step in height, is going to have an almost exponential effect on the car.
So, I weighed the wheel with the 30x9.5 was about 64lbs, the tire listed by Nitto is only 34lbs, so I'm guessing the stock rim is about 28-30lbs.
The going weight for a true 33x12.5 regardless of rim fitment is about 70 pounds a piece, but digging around on Nitto's sizing chart I stumbled upon a miracle of a thing- their 305/60r18 ridge grappler, at a much lower load index, that I can take advantage of being such a small crossover - listed at 50 pounds - that's a 20 pound saving for what comes out to be a quarter inch difference in both dimensions-- that'll play. The 305/60 is unique to the 18" rim size, and none of the others come close to that weight without going back down to 9-10" in width.
This limits me in wheel size to 18" rims, the annoying news being there are plenty of wide wheels for the 95-06 Jeeps that share our lug pattern, but those are almost all 16" or 17", so any other rim that I find would need an adapter or a spacer. One wheel I was looking at was the Black Rhino Overland in 18x9.5 with an offset of +6, and on my CAD setup I simulated an adapter of 18mm, which turns out to put it at the perfect offset to keep the tire from running into the front subframe, and just barely kiss (minor rubbing) the firewall. While I feel like there is still room to improve on fitment for larger than 29.5" tire with the stock geometry, this setup makes me pretty sure that 33" is the absolute biggest that will actually fit with modified control arms and stock axle lengths.
The 18" Black Rhino rims come in at about 33lbs a piece though, which seemed heavy for rims, so I figured I could find better
A quick look through Fuel's catalog and I found out their 18x9 rims are 44 pounds a piece, and suddenly 33 doesn't sound that bad.
That still puts my wheel and tire combo at an est. 84lbs, which is staggaring for what is basically an AWD hatchback, but at least it isn't 115+lbs if I had absolutely no better judgement.
Guys really though, I'm 5'4" and I weigh 120lbs. I don't know what I would do if a single tire weighed more than I do.
There IS room to improve hopefully- several days of digging and I have found a flow-formed wheel by Motegi that has a somewhat similar split spoke design to the Overlands. They look a little spindly from the face, and a bit less aggressive than an offroad rim, but they do only weigh 24lbs for an 18x9. That would be 74 pounds per wheel.
74 pounds is really close to the 64 I have now, so that's basically NASA level lightness right there.
The load rating is only 1280, which would be plenty for any other Juke, but for any offroad shenanigans, I wonder if it will be enough.
Wow I'm surprised you read all that, it's basically just me rambling my way through an information dump
If you made it this far I would really appreciate it if you could post some nice 18x9s you find- concave preferably in the range of 0 to -10 offset (but I would be running a spacer for the Motegi's anyway). Bonus points for lightness, open to a lot of designs you think might look good on the Juke. This might still be a year or so out, so we've got some time.
![Land vehicle Vehicle Car Automotive tire Tire]()
![Land vehicle Vehicle Car Automotive tire Automotive design]()
The stock Juke has 27's (being generous), so a 33 big big step for this vehicle. With the increased drive ratio and the increased rotational mass, the next 3" step, while only another 3" step in height, is going to have an almost exponential effect on the car.
So, I weighed the wheel with the 30x9.5 was about 64lbs, the tire listed by Nitto is only 34lbs, so I'm guessing the stock rim is about 28-30lbs.
The going weight for a true 33x12.5 regardless of rim fitment is about 70 pounds a piece, but digging around on Nitto's sizing chart I stumbled upon a miracle of a thing- their 305/60r18 ridge grappler, at a much lower load index, that I can take advantage of being such a small crossover - listed at 50 pounds - that's a 20 pound saving for what comes out to be a quarter inch difference in both dimensions-- that'll play. The 305/60 is unique to the 18" rim size, and none of the others come close to that weight without going back down to 9-10" in width.
This limits me in wheel size to 18" rims, the annoying news being there are plenty of wide wheels for the 95-06 Jeeps that share our lug pattern, but those are almost all 16" or 17", so any other rim that I find would need an adapter or a spacer. One wheel I was looking at was the Black Rhino Overland in 18x9.5 with an offset of +6, and on my CAD setup I simulated an adapter of 18mm, which turns out to put it at the perfect offset to keep the tire from running into the front subframe, and just barely kiss (minor rubbing) the firewall. While I feel like there is still room to improve on fitment for larger than 29.5" tire with the stock geometry, this setup makes me pretty sure that 33" is the absolute biggest that will actually fit with modified control arms and stock axle lengths.
The 18" Black Rhino rims come in at about 33lbs a piece though, which seemed heavy for rims, so I figured I could find better
A quick look through Fuel's catalog and I found out their 18x9 rims are 44 pounds a piece, and suddenly 33 doesn't sound that bad.
That still puts my wheel and tire combo at an est. 84lbs, which is staggaring for what is basically an AWD hatchback, but at least it isn't 115+lbs if I had absolutely no better judgement.
Guys really though, I'm 5'4" and I weigh 120lbs. I don't know what I would do if a single tire weighed more than I do.
There IS room to improve hopefully- several days of digging and I have found a flow-formed wheel by Motegi that has a somewhat similar split spoke design to the Overlands. They look a little spindly from the face, and a bit less aggressive than an offroad rim, but they do only weigh 24lbs for an 18x9. That would be 74 pounds per wheel.
74 pounds is really close to the 64 I have now, so that's basically NASA level lightness right there.
The load rating is only 1280, which would be plenty for any other Juke, but for any offroad shenanigans, I wonder if it will be enough.
Wow I'm surprised you read all that, it's basically just me rambling my way through an information dump
If you made it this far I would really appreciate it if you could post some nice 18x9s you find- concave preferably in the range of 0 to -10 offset (but I would be running a spacer for the Motegi's anyway). Bonus points for lightness, open to a lot of designs you think might look good on the Juke. This might still be a year or so out, so we've got some time.
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The more I think about it, 10 extra pounds per wheel is a not so bad trade-off to have an offroad capable rim that's built with large sidewall tire seating in mind. As far as rotational mass, most of that weight is going to be in the spokes and not so much the barrel, so really I think the biggest difference comes from the tires being a lower load rating. Imagine 10 (or even 20) more pounds of weight added to the very outside of the tire has a lot more effect than that weight added to the center in the rim.
The more tires I look at, the more it blows my mind that Nitto makes the 305/60r18 so light. The only way I can save weight on that is if I drop to a 275/65r18 (32x11) or go back to 17 with 265/70r17 (32x11), but when the goal is "33x12.5" I'll take the extra 5lbs for the extra width.
This is all oddly specific, but there are some angles where the 9.5" wide tires don't look proportionately wide enough for 29.5 height, so I want to make sure if I go to 33s I get a much wider aspect ratio. A 32x11 would be a tiny bit lighter, but would still look the same as my current tire in proportion, so the 305 being just a little bit shorter than 33 and just a little wider than 12 is just begging to get put on this Juke.
And I guess one further point of clarification, if tire companies spec out 33x12.5 tires that are only 32.6 x 12.2, then I'm absolutely gonna refer to my 245/65 as "30x9.5" and the 305/60 as "33x12.5" They are the manufacturers after all, so that logic can be taken with some kind of authority.
The more tires I look at, the more it blows my mind that Nitto makes the 305/60r18 so light. The only way I can save weight on that is if I drop to a 275/65r18 (32x11) or go back to 17 with 265/70r17 (32x11), but when the goal is "33x12.5" I'll take the extra 5lbs for the extra width.
This is all oddly specific, but there are some angles where the 9.5" wide tires don't look proportionately wide enough for 29.5 height, so I want to make sure if I go to 33s I get a much wider aspect ratio. A 32x11 would be a tiny bit lighter, but would still look the same as my current tire in proportion, so the 305 being just a little bit shorter than 33 and just a little wider than 12 is just begging to get put on this Juke.
And I guess one further point of clarification, if tire companies spec out 33x12.5 tires that are only 32.6 x 12.2, then I'm absolutely gonna refer to my 245/65 as "30x9.5" and the 305/60 as "33x12.5" They are the manufacturers after all, so that logic can be taken with some kind of authority.
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353 Posts
My new coilovers have arrived!
I can't say much yet, because there are still a few things that need to be buttoned up and adjusted. As of right now, I have the struts and rear shocks installed, but I haven't installed the rear springs, so the rear is still on stock springs and spacers. (lift 1.75")
I set the struts to the measurement I was using, and when I put the strut next to the OEM I realized that my measurement was horribly horribly wrong. I believe where this happened was I was measuring wheel travel distances from the fender lip to the center cap, and instead of taking the actual strut length which was supposed to be about 24", I must have swapped it out for the wheel measurement at droop, which was 22". To be fair, I wrote everything down on the same piece of paper, and was sitting on all these numbers for about 3 months while I waited on several coilover companies to cooperate with me, so it's not absurd to think that those numbers sort of lost their meaning by the end of it.
Thankfully, Silver's built the coils an inch longer than I needed, so absolutely maxing them out, I was able to set the struts at 23", giving me a final suspension lift of about 1.5" above stock. For comparison, the old spacers were only good for a 1" lift. I told Silver's that I wouldn't be getting my money's worth unless I got at least 2" out of them, but of course it was my bad information that got me here, so I'll talk to the guy at Silver's and see what we can do about it. Also the size of the spring and throw of the shock body looks a lot less than the OEM strut, the reason we went with this setup was because 220mm was the largest spring they could get in 6K, but if I have to order longer shock bodies from them (I think he said they have 260mm shocks) I'll see what other spring options there are.
Some other weird things:
both the front and rear sway bar links interfere with the new parts in some way, at about one turn of the steering wheel, the link grazes the strut, and when the car was on jack stands, the bolt for the rear link was touching the shock body, but at ride height, it is less of an issue.
Guys, I really tried to get the rear springs out, but I just couldn't get the trailing arm down far enough to take it out by hand. I even tried unbolting the upper control arm, which turned out to be an annoying, but eye-opening mistake. They way the rear suspension interacts on the AWD is absolutely bizarre, and as the trailing arm twists down, it tweaks both of the control arms about 10 degrees, and combined with the fact that to get the alignment correct, both of the cam bolts were cranked in opposite directions, which made it very difficult to get that bolted back up with the tools I have. So the bushings are probably under a lot of stress, but they look like they are in fair condition. I thought I was going to need new control arms to correct camber and toe if I go any higher, but I think it might be smarter to leave the geometry alone and fix the alignment with shim plates.
It's officially Summer in Florida now, meaning it's raining nonstop and I was just really lucky to get this all done yesterday and miss the rain, but hopefully I can get a dry day next week to be able to drop the rear and very carefully extract the rear spring with a set of compressors and see where the Juke ends up on Silver's rear coils. I am still a guinea pig for this, after all, so I want to relay as much honest information as I can back to Silver's.
![186444]()
![186445]()
![Coil spring Suspension part Suspension Tire Shock absorber]()
I can't say much yet, because there are still a few things that need to be buttoned up and adjusted. As of right now, I have the struts and rear shocks installed, but I haven't installed the rear springs, so the rear is still on stock springs and spacers. (lift 1.75")
I set the struts to the measurement I was using, and when I put the strut next to the OEM I realized that my measurement was horribly horribly wrong. I believe where this happened was I was measuring wheel travel distances from the fender lip to the center cap, and instead of taking the actual strut length which was supposed to be about 24", I must have swapped it out for the wheel measurement at droop, which was 22". To be fair, I wrote everything down on the same piece of paper, and was sitting on all these numbers for about 3 months while I waited on several coilover companies to cooperate with me, so it's not absurd to think that those numbers sort of lost their meaning by the end of it.
Thankfully, Silver's built the coils an inch longer than I needed, so absolutely maxing them out, I was able to set the struts at 23", giving me a final suspension lift of about 1.5" above stock. For comparison, the old spacers were only good for a 1" lift. I told Silver's that I wouldn't be getting my money's worth unless I got at least 2" out of them, but of course it was my bad information that got me here, so I'll talk to the guy at Silver's and see what we can do about it. Also the size of the spring and throw of the shock body looks a lot less than the OEM strut, the reason we went with this setup was because 220mm was the largest spring they could get in 6K, but if I have to order longer shock bodies from them (I think he said they have 260mm shocks) I'll see what other spring options there are.
Some other weird things:
both the front and rear sway bar links interfere with the new parts in some way, at about one turn of the steering wheel, the link grazes the strut, and when the car was on jack stands, the bolt for the rear link was touching the shock body, but at ride height, it is less of an issue.
Guys, I really tried to get the rear springs out, but I just couldn't get the trailing arm down far enough to take it out by hand. I even tried unbolting the upper control arm, which turned out to be an annoying, but eye-opening mistake. They way the rear suspension interacts on the AWD is absolutely bizarre, and as the trailing arm twists down, it tweaks both of the control arms about 10 degrees, and combined with the fact that to get the alignment correct, both of the cam bolts were cranked in opposite directions, which made it very difficult to get that bolted back up with the tools I have. So the bushings are probably under a lot of stress, but they look like they are in fair condition. I thought I was going to need new control arms to correct camber and toe if I go any higher, but I think it might be smarter to leave the geometry alone and fix the alignment with shim plates.
It's officially Summer in Florida now, meaning it's raining nonstop and I was just really lucky to get this all done yesterday and miss the rain, but hopefully I can get a dry day next week to be able to drop the rear and very carefully extract the rear spring with a set of compressors and see where the Juke ends up on Silver's rear coils. I am still a guinea pig for this, after all, so I want to relay as much honest information as I can back to Silver's.
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Jaxxa I think I just accidentally found this video of your Juke while trying to find out if you could still find this ridiculous hood from Yatt Cabron (Intel courtesy of Noob). Turns probably not because their FB page and site are basiclaly nonexistent.
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353 Posts
I just realized the barrier to entry for larger tires is a lot lower than I've been thinking, the one thing keeping me from engaging the idea fully is the whole control arm situation, but I could literally just make a bracket by drilling two holes in 3/16" steel, but after that, to get the wheel and tire setup I'm looking at would be easily up in the $1800 - $2000 range
But I might f*ck around and buy a set of Jeep wheels on craigslist, the stock wheels are 32x10, all the Jeep people go aftermarket and try and get rid of them, some people are selling complete sets of 5 with rims and tires for $300 and I could just buy new adapter spacers for another hundred.
So, ~$400 could get me to a pretty decent set of test wheels as a stop gap before going all in on 33x12.5
These things fell together kind of suddenly, it reminds me a lot of how I felt getting the 245/65r17s in and it was a mad dash week getting everything ready, and even that at the time seemed like too big a tire and it worked out. I'd say the stakes are a bit lower this time around, but what this means is that there's a promising chance I could have a Juke driving on 32" tires within 2 weeks
But I might f*ck around and buy a set of Jeep wheels on craigslist, the stock wheels are 32x10, all the Jeep people go aftermarket and try and get rid of them, some people are selling complete sets of 5 with rims and tires for $300 and I could just buy new adapter spacers for another hundred.
So, ~$400 could get me to a pretty decent set of test wheels as a stop gap before going all in on 33x12.5
These things fell together kind of suddenly, it reminds me a lot of how I felt getting the 245/65r17s in and it was a mad dash week getting everything ready, and even that at the time seemed like too big a tire and it worked out. I'd say the stakes are a bit lower this time around, but what this means is that there's a promising chance I could have a Juke driving on 32" tires within 2 weeks
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