2.5 Ton JL/JT Heavy Duty Aluminum Steering Kit (Part# RPM-2001)
The following is a real world review of the RPMSteering 2.5 Ton JL/JT Heavy Duty Aluminum Steering Kit that I purchased approximately 10 months ago and these are my personal opinions and experience with this product. I daily drive my Jeep and we have also driven on some long trips and have done some serious Rock Crawling with this system in place.
This is not a paid or sponsored brand review from RPMSteering. Full disclosure after we purchased these kits we did become an RPMSteering Dealer so we could offer/source these kits locally.
Why we went with Aluminum instead of one of the other popular solutions. We knew the more Rock Crawling we did with our rigs the more we needed to consider upgrading our steering components to handle the abuse we would likely put it through, so we opted to go with an Aluminum based kit mainly because if you did take a hit on the tie rod the “memory” factor of Aluminum would bounce right back instead of permananetly being bent with a steel/chromoly solution. (You will see below we put these through that specific test).
Below is a bent Stock Tie Rod after taking a rock hit.
Here are some pics that show the abuse we have put our RPMSeteering 2.5 Ton JL/JT Heavy Duty Aluminum Steering Kits through and they are still straight as an arrow.
The kit is very easy to install, and looks great in my opinion.
2.5 Ton JL/JT Heavy Duty Aluminum Steering Kit
Pros:
- Massive 2″ solid 7075 T6 aluminum link with hexed ends for easy adjustments
- 1.25″ forged American made TREs (greasable)
- No drilling required
- Anti-flop ends (included)
- Serrated Belleville washers (included)
- Tie rod and drag link included in the kit
- Drag link flip option
- Options for Stock Axles or 1-Ton Swaps and some other well known steering option ends.
- Very high travel without end binding.
Cons:
- Concerned about the Mixed metals between the Aluminum Links and the Forged ends, it is too early to tell if it will be an issue or not but I suspect being located in the snow belt at some point it could become one.
- Due to the sheer size of the 2″ drag link and tie rod, you have to be aware of steering stabilizer or Hydro-assist location placement so they dont get damaged when steering is a full lock or flexing. (The new RPMSteering Offset Tie Rod Bracket helps with this issue)
We run this kit on both of our shop rigs and it has proven to be very strong and holds up to everything we through at them, I also noticed in our case, it seemed to tighten up the front end (eliminated alot of steering drift and some wobbles that we experienced prior to putting this in place and we only had like 15k miles on the stock components).
We definitely recommend these to anyone serious about Rock Crawling, they simply give you piece of mind when wheeling.
While this review is specifically for the JL/JT, these kits are available for JL / JT / JK and TJ / LJ.
Interested in purchasing a 2.5 Ton JL/JT Heavy Duty Aluminum Steering Kit? Check out our online shop or Contact Us with your needs.
4.5 Rocks out of 5
