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353 Posts
Haven't done much other than commute so far. it's the front springs that are holding me back, but once I get new ones installed, it'll be ready for action!
A Hardcore OFFROAD Juke
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460 Posts
Nice!
How stiff is your suspension again? Don’t hit any big bumps.
How stiff is your suspension again? Don’t hit any big bumps.
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353 Posts
6K, lol not stiff at all. Maybe I should actually get the Silver's springs installed in the rear and hopefully I can take it to 2.5 or 3 inches. They only gave me a 220mm for the rear though, and after seeing you shove a 260 back there, I'm not sure if it's gonna be enough, but it does have 50mm of adjustibility in the perch, so we will see.
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353 Posts
Heeeey I never said anything about a snorkel so don't get your hopes up lmao. I've been spamming my fabricator guy to start working on the tire carrier, hopefully I can get that made and installed before September when I'm going on vacation to San Antonio.
CVT is alright as far as I know, which is to say I really have no idea. I would almost be more scared for a geared transmission, because it seems like the CVT is smarter than me in that aspect, it just chooses the ratio it needs and then goes, but that could really easily be hiding how much strain it's actually under.
I finally weighed the new wheel setup today, it went from 65 lbs per wheel on the old setup straight to 80 on the new setup which was a lot heavier than I was expecting, but of course the load rating on these new tires is up in the 3600lb range. You could balance a whole Juke on just one tire if you wanted to, lmao, but I got them used at a good price. Obviously my next new set I'll get a much lighter, lower load range tire.
Also, I got my new springs in today, well one set of them... These are the 350lb 10" springs that I actually bought to get installed in the rear, but my 12" springs for some reason haven't shipped yet, but I needed new ones for the front, so I installed these for the time being. Hopefully now I should be able to drive normally without bottoming out the springs over every crest.
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CVT is alright as far as I know, which is to say I really have no idea. I would almost be more scared for a geared transmission, because it seems like the CVT is smarter than me in that aspect, it just chooses the ratio it needs and then goes, but that could really easily be hiding how much strain it's actually under.
I finally weighed the new wheel setup today, it went from 65 lbs per wheel on the old setup straight to 80 on the new setup which was a lot heavier than I was expecting, but of course the load rating on these new tires is up in the 3600lb range. You could balance a whole Juke on just one tire if you wanted to, lmao, but I got them used at a good price. Obviously my next new set I'll get a much lighter, lower load range tire.
Also, I got my new springs in today, well one set of them... These are the 350lb 10" springs that I actually bought to get installed in the rear, but my 12" springs for some reason haven't shipped yet, but I needed new ones for the front, so I installed these for the time being. Hopefully now I should be able to drive normally without bottoming out the springs over every crest.
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353 Posts
32.5" Tires, 2.5" of lift, ground clearance 12" at the subframe (fender flares still in progress)
Already pretty ridiculous, and I'll be the first to admit I don't get to offroad as often as I'd like, but I do get a lot of positive comments and cool interactions with it
Tooooo hot to work outside, and inspired by Australian expedition vehicles and other overlanding rigs, (and particularly jealous of some Jeeps in my area) I started (foolishly) thinking about more mods that could be done. The subframe body lift is still possible, which I've already seen done to a Juke that was turned into a donk, as well as a particularly clean offroad gen 2 from the Philippines. Doing that, I could pick up another 2 inches without changing any of the suspension geometry.
And with the extra clearance, It could potentially clear 35" tires-- so out of sheer boredom here's what that would look like:
5 inches of overall lift, 10 inches taller than a stock Juke, almost 14 inches of ground clearance.
It was really refreshing to finally close the CAD document as my idea transferred into reality through classic hard work and troubleshooting, but I guess I'm back to dreaming now.
I stumbled across a note from a year and a half ago that had a 28" tire size with an X through it because I wasn't sure if it would fit. It turns out that gets a lot easier when you don't care as much what gets cut, bent or rubbed.
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So I took it offroading, did a flex test and just for good measure, jumped it like 12 feet, and here's what I found out:
I have about 6.5" of suspension travel in the front and about 7" in the rear. Everything's pretty well set up, nothing rubs and it's actually a pretty capable machine as is.
The thing that bothers me is that I know I could get more suspension travel out of it if I reduced my suspension lift and went to a lighter spring, but that also means I might have to add a body lift to maintain good fender clearance.
Do I go for an intermediate step, with 275lb springs and lift the subframe 2"? to try and get ~8" of travel with the same components
or do I just go all out, retrofit the coilovers with Fox shocks, 225lb springs and a 4" subframe lift to go for 10"+?
It's pretty clear by now I operate on the basis of "if it's possible I will do it" and "if it isn't possible, I'll make it possible" and I don't think I'll ever stop being like this. However, I do like this feeling of being able to drive my car without getting stressed about something going wrong.
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12,520 Posts
I would just enjoy as is til you get the tail gate spare tire thing done.
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353 Posts
Technically yes because that would drastically effect my weight distribution and also change what spring rate I might need
Also I'm like 80% on the design of the tire carrier I've just been too lazy to meet up with the fabricator
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353 Posts
Ok some real research and development:
Found a place with trails that was mostly sand, the Juke gets bogged down on some of the softer stuff like in clearings, but it still makes its way through it. Did some hill climbs, does great with momentum, but still gets a little boggy. It was at it's best when it was on harder packed rough terrain, which I had the most fun with anyway, so I think I'm going to push the build more in that direction.
I was only out there about an hour before my CVT started to whine louder than my exhaust, so I've finally got a CVT cooler on the way (about damn time). The suspension, while not the amount of travel I would like, again, works pretty much flawlessly.
So I pretty much just have to keep offroading it at this point, see if the CVT cooler makes a significant difference, and also seeing if sport mode helps to keep the revs up and not bog as much, or maybe look into some other things like driveshaft angles, or dare I even say (going back to a smaller tire) I think I might stay with a large tire setup even if it kills me-- but I still have my old tires and wheel spacers lying around, so it wouldn't hurt to try.
Also maybe take all of the stuff out of my trunk to keep it from clunking around, because that was annoying too. The Juke looks pretty composed going over those crests, but it was pretty hectic inside.
Found a place with trails that was mostly sand, the Juke gets bogged down on some of the softer stuff like in clearings, but it still makes its way through it. Did some hill climbs, does great with momentum, but still gets a little boggy. It was at it's best when it was on harder packed rough terrain, which I had the most fun with anyway, so I think I'm going to push the build more in that direction.
I was only out there about an hour before my CVT started to whine louder than my exhaust, so I've finally got a CVT cooler on the way (about damn time). The suspension, while not the amount of travel I would like, again, works pretty much flawlessly.
So I pretty much just have to keep offroading it at this point, see if the CVT cooler makes a significant difference, and also seeing if sport mode helps to keep the revs up and not bog as much, or maybe look into some other things like driveshaft angles, or dare I even say (going back to a smaller tire) I think I might stay with a large tire setup even if it kills me-- but I still have my old tires and wheel spacers lying around, so it wouldn't hurt to try.
Also maybe take all of the stuff out of my trunk to keep it from clunking around, because that was annoying too. The Juke looks pretty composed going over those crests, but it was pretty hectic inside.
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353 Posts
Boy it has been a WHILE since I updated this thread. To be fair, I probably was on the right track breaking the Swing-Out Tire Carrier and the Subframe Spacer Lift into their own threads to clean things up.
So now that I completed the subframe drop and actually successfully got it at it's target ride height (5" suspension lift) and because I have some sort of mild novelty-seeking personality disorder or whatever, I finally felt confident that I could get 35s under this car. Thankfully I was actually able to trim away just enough metal to get almost my whole steering angle back without having to get too messy cutting the whole fender wall out.
![Wheel Tire Land vehicle Vehicle Car]()
![Tire Car Wheel Land vehicle Vehicle]()
![Tire Wheel Car Land vehicle Vehicle]()
![Wheel Tire Plant Vehicle Plant community]()
It is obscene, but I had to do it.
After I put on 29.5" tires, blowing the previous 28" maximum out of the water, I had got it in my head that I wanted to have the single largest Juke on the planet. Even at 29.5" I knew there was room on the table to go bigger, switching to coilovers to gain clearance by the spring perch could easily get to 30, 31 with the right offset and a tiny bit of trimming. Of course I had been riding on the success on my radical trick to space the control arm mounts to lengthen the wheelbase and gain more clearance. This eventually got me to fit a fairly comfortable 33" 285/70 under it and I had thought I would be untouchable, until I came into contact with the owner of a Juke in Indonesia that was lifted 4" and had 33x12.5 r15 mud terrains, and so much trimming his front door had a radius cut into it. Very cool guy, very sick build, but I just couldn't stand for this. I knew that if I trimmed as much as he did, I could easily fit a MASSIVE tire, but I knew there had to be a more elegant solution to size up. I was already working in a comfortable tolerance of drivetrain components, but I figured my CV axles were already at about 4" of misalignment from stock so I decided I couldn't push that any further. The only way at that point was to move the entire drivetrain away from the body. It was around the same time I was scheming my own subframe drop, I came across a high-riser Juke (because they get mad when you call them donks) which I could clearly tell the subframe was below the front bumper fascia, so that was all the proof I needed to know a subframe drop was possible, but the icing on the cake was I later found out that Juke was on 28" rims, and do you know the height of the low-profile tire that goes on an r28? 34's. Somewhere in the world there was a Juke just casually rolling around on 34" tires just making a mockery of my whole life's work (lmao)
Well I finally made it to the top of Juke mountain, and... well yeah it kinda sucks up here lmao.
At least on 33s it still had its moments where it would still feel surprisingly sporty. I knew what I was getting into here, these things are gigantic and heavy, but I didn't quite heed the minutia of owning 35s until I was knee-deep (or I guess for me, waist deep) in it.
For anybody who hasn't owned a vehicle with 35x12.5 tires on it: They are heavy (duh) it's a LOT of rubber far away from the center of the wheel, so it is very hard to balance perfectly and they rumble and vibrate and make a bit of noise. And they are W I D E, where a smaller, narrower tire would have a more concise and direct contact patch, the contact patch of a 12.50 is this big vague mushy square, and even with the best alignment will start to wander all over the road. Oh and did I mention they are heavy? I expected a big heavy tire with a lot of sidewall to soak up a lot of road impact, after all that's what everybody says when the get a taller sidewall tire, but in this setup you get a very harsh ride, which I can only narrow down to the shocks being too small to handle the mass of these tires and not having sufficient damping ability to counteract their movement. This of course is a problem you would only get if you were to say, put a specialty oversize truck tire on your hatchback.
So in all the ways 35s have made this Juke a bit less convenient or comfortable to drive, there is a bit of rather baffling good news: the change in efficiency is almost negligible from a stock Juke. I ran some highway tests and measured gas consumption and I have discovered that this thing still gets nearly 22 miles per gallon under normal highway driving conditions 65-70mph and that's in Normal on the D-Mode and in AWD-V. And I can extrapolate from the behavior of the dashboard mpg display that I average somewhere between 17-20 mpg in the city, which in my experience driving it 4 years ago completely stock, VERY similar numbers. People love to dunk on CVTs, but compared to other types of transmissions, getting performance like that out of tires like these is basically black magic, and because the CVT does CVT things I think is the only reason I've gotten away with not needing to re-gear the differential which is common in trucks even if you only go up in size a few inches.
Would I go Bigger? At this point, you show me another Juke on 35s, that's dope. If it's cleaner than mine, I might get a bit envious though. Kinda proud of the fact this is all with original drivetrain components, but this is really pushing it. The only real step beyond this would be 37s? which at that point like frame-swap it my guy, you're making a monster truck lmao.
In all fairness, if this thing makes it to the point of needing new tires I think I'll just get an A/T highway tire like a Cooper at3 XLT probably in a 315/70 or even 305/70 instead, I imagine that would be more comfortable. I know I have the plate and all, and in a lot of ways that was part of my ultimatum, but like legitimately 35" WHLs are 2BIG for the Juke lmao.
And just in case anyone is wondering, the Juke is my primary vehicle and I STILL drive it every day.
So now that I completed the subframe drop and actually successfully got it at it's target ride height (5" suspension lift) and because I have some sort of mild novelty-seeking personality disorder or whatever, I finally felt confident that I could get 35s under this car. Thankfully I was actually able to trim away just enough metal to get almost my whole steering angle back without having to get too messy cutting the whole fender wall out.
It is obscene, but I had to do it.
After I put on 29.5" tires, blowing the previous 28" maximum out of the water, I had got it in my head that I wanted to have the single largest Juke on the planet. Even at 29.5" I knew there was room on the table to go bigger, switching to coilovers to gain clearance by the spring perch could easily get to 30, 31 with the right offset and a tiny bit of trimming. Of course I had been riding on the success on my radical trick to space the control arm mounts to lengthen the wheelbase and gain more clearance. This eventually got me to fit a fairly comfortable 33" 285/70 under it and I had thought I would be untouchable, until I came into contact with the owner of a Juke in Indonesia that was lifted 4" and had 33x12.5 r15 mud terrains, and so much trimming his front door had a radius cut into it. Very cool guy, very sick build, but I just couldn't stand for this. I knew that if I trimmed as much as he did, I could easily fit a MASSIVE tire, but I knew there had to be a more elegant solution to size up. I was already working in a comfortable tolerance of drivetrain components, but I figured my CV axles were already at about 4" of misalignment from stock so I decided I couldn't push that any further. The only way at that point was to move the entire drivetrain away from the body. It was around the same time I was scheming my own subframe drop, I came across a high-riser Juke (because they get mad when you call them donks) which I could clearly tell the subframe was below the front bumper fascia, so that was all the proof I needed to know a subframe drop was possible, but the icing on the cake was I later found out that Juke was on 28" rims, and do you know the height of the low-profile tire that goes on an r28? 34's. Somewhere in the world there was a Juke just casually rolling around on 34" tires just making a mockery of my whole life's work (lmao)
Well I finally made it to the top of Juke mountain, and... well yeah it kinda sucks up here lmao.
At least on 33s it still had its moments where it would still feel surprisingly sporty. I knew what I was getting into here, these things are gigantic and heavy, but I didn't quite heed the minutia of owning 35s until I was knee-deep (or I guess for me, waist deep) in it.
For anybody who hasn't owned a vehicle with 35x12.5 tires on it: They are heavy (duh) it's a LOT of rubber far away from the center of the wheel, so it is very hard to balance perfectly and they rumble and vibrate and make a bit of noise. And they are W I D E, where a smaller, narrower tire would have a more concise and direct contact patch, the contact patch of a 12.50 is this big vague mushy square, and even with the best alignment will start to wander all over the road. Oh and did I mention they are heavy? I expected a big heavy tire with a lot of sidewall to soak up a lot of road impact, after all that's what everybody says when the get a taller sidewall tire, but in this setup you get a very harsh ride, which I can only narrow down to the shocks being too small to handle the mass of these tires and not having sufficient damping ability to counteract their movement. This of course is a problem you would only get if you were to say, put a specialty oversize truck tire on your hatchback.
So in all the ways 35s have made this Juke a bit less convenient or comfortable to drive, there is a bit of rather baffling good news: the change in efficiency is almost negligible from a stock Juke. I ran some highway tests and measured gas consumption and I have discovered that this thing still gets nearly 22 miles per gallon under normal highway driving conditions 65-70mph and that's in Normal on the D-Mode and in AWD-V. And I can extrapolate from the behavior of the dashboard mpg display that I average somewhere between 17-20 mpg in the city, which in my experience driving it 4 years ago completely stock, VERY similar numbers. People love to dunk on CVTs, but compared to other types of transmissions, getting performance like that out of tires like these is basically black magic, and because the CVT does CVT things I think is the only reason I've gotten away with not needing to re-gear the differential which is common in trucks even if you only go up in size a few inches.
Would I go Bigger? At this point, you show me another Juke on 35s, that's dope. If it's cleaner than mine, I might get a bit envious though. Kinda proud of the fact this is all with original drivetrain components, but this is really pushing it. The only real step beyond this would be 37s? which at that point like frame-swap it my guy, you're making a monster truck lmao.
In all fairness, if this thing makes it to the point of needing new tires I think I'll just get an A/T highway tire like a Cooper at3 XLT probably in a 315/70 or even 305/70 instead, I imagine that would be more comfortable. I know I have the plate and all, and in a lot of ways that was part of my ultimatum, but like legitimately 35" WHLs are 2BIG for the Juke lmao.
And just in case anyone is wondering, the Juke is my primary vehicle and I STILL drive it every day.
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