With a couple months of ice-cream run duty and a few wheeling trips on the "new" tire/wheel setup, it's become apparent that things are leaning a touch too far toward trail use only for the LJ
The MTR's are fabulous at single-digit air pressure in the snow, and do what generally any tire does on typical trail surfaces, but once you get them on the street it's borderline miserable. They are simply too wide, following every single rut or groove in the road, and they have a bad habit of inducing death wobble which makes the poor LJ undriveable anywhere above 40mph or so. In an effort to combat this, I contacted my friends at West Texas Off-Road and they sent me one of their Redneck Ram hydro assist cylinder kits:
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I also ordered a very specific tube clamp to use on the 1-1/2" aluminum tie-rod. You'll note that unlike most tube clamps, this one is not drilled through on the back half of the clamshell, giving more room to place the tabs for the hydraulic cylinder to mount:
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Parts in hand, it was time to get things installt. When I built the JK front axle to put under the LJ, I was able to scab on a simple bracket setup below the coil spring pad to mount the steering stabilizer. Because of the extreme forces involved with a hydraulic cylinder setup, this mounting arrangement wasn't going to cut the mustard so I carved the face of that bracket off and replaced it with a new one that would allow me to place the cylinder mounting tabs in double-shear:
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With the cylinder mounting mocked up, it was time to deal with the hydraulic portion of the program. The 2003+ TJ platform utilizes a Mercedes-sourced steering gearbox, and unlike the more common Saginaw units used on just about everything else, there just isn't a ton of information out there on tapping them for hydro assist. I was able to scare up some old forum posts from Pirate back in the 2010 era, and poked some holes in the box accordingly:
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Then it came down to running the pressure lines, and bleeding the system:
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Unfortunately I had the lines reversed, so the above photo does not represent the final product and I got to go through the bleeding process twice
... Similarly, I'm still fighting a leak around the threads on the forward fitting on the gearbox, so the saga continues. However, overall the installation was a success as the drivability of the LJ on the street is markedly better. There is still a tendency for very slight shimmy/wobble if conditions are just right, but it's not an every-time situation like it once was and I may be able to dial in just a touch more caster to continue to push it out of the system. In the meantime, we'll continue to hit the Baskin Robbins with everything she's got
