As a lot of the off-roading will be fairly extreme and often unaccompanied the decision was made to equip the TJ with a winch front and rear to try and cover all eventualities. Suprisingly it turns out that the rear winch has seen more action than the front to date. (mostly recovering other vehicles trying to follow in the TJ’s wake). Other modifications Included side rails to protect the sills, strong enough to be Hi-lifted on and doubling up as steps. A tubular frame around the windscreen (this is not a rollbar) that will keep branches from smashing the screen, tearing the canvas hood and providing a high mounting position for 4 spotlights (not worth doing in my books, as they mostly illuminate the bonnet) as well as carrying the 2 bridging ladders on the top. The now much larger spare wheel has been removed from the back door and moved inside. The rear seats have been removed and a rear bulkhead bar has been fitted to restrain the spare wheel now behind the passenger seat and help re-enforce the (standard) roll bar. Where the spare was there is now a double jerry can holder and pioneer rack (shovel, spade and pick). There are tie down points on the floor in the rear to lash down the boxes of off-road equipment the vehicle carries and a battery box with the second battery for the winches and the compressor for the Airlockers and tyre Inflation.
The first decision was to fit 33x9.50x15 BF Goodrich Mud Terrain (MT) tyres. These tyres as the size denotes are approximately 33" tall, 9.50" wide and fit 15" diameter rims. This setup gives good ground clearance, good grip off-road and good manners on road. (At the time there was only the 9.50 or 12.50 tyre widths available, the 12.50 was considered to fat for what we wanted) The rims selected were Smiths wheels Taurus style 8" x 15" alloys.(again there was a limited choice at that time) These have a 95mm, backspace or offset (the measurement from the inner bead face of the rim to the inner-facing surface that mounts onto the hub). This gives the vehicle a significantly wider track (which will help with stability when the vehicle is raised). The wheels and tyres were subsequently upgraded to 33x10.50x15 BF Goodrich Mud Terrains fitted onto American Racing wheels. The wider track now puts some 2" of the tread face outside of the wheel arch flare. This, is Illegal and will mean the tyres will throw mud etc all over the vehicle, so the next step was to fit wider Warn wheel arch flares. We colour coded these to match the bodywork (moss green). (the original flares were stick on and a totally different shape to the originals.They were not very clever and we ended up bonding them on! They were later changed to the second generation when they became available, that was a wider verion of the original flare).
