I understand what body lift and suspension do. A body lift seems more like a "tummy tuck" to get the tranny higher... more room for skid plates.

However, I ran into a Jeep engineer who was a very experienced off-roader too. He said he would NEVER recommend a body lift... just do suspension only.

He has witnessed accidents where the Jeep
is hit hard... causing the body lift to shear away... separating the body of the truck from the frame completely.

Anyone ever heard of this risk??

It depends on how much body lift and how its manufactured and installed. Yes, 30 years ago people made body lift out of all kinds of materials, including wood. Hardware store longer bolts were common. Some not tightened to correct spec's, and captive nuts often rusted to the point where they didn't hold anything.

The general rule is that the higher the body lift, the poorer the idea. Some very respected companies use 1" blocks with great success. I have no idea who your purported "expert" is. But Currie uses 1" blocks and 4" suspension lift all the time. They prep a lot of jeeps that seem to do very well. Just using body blocks to save money may not be the best course. Its as bad as going too far with suspension lift.

Old rusted out jeeps and other vehicles that have a body bolted to a frame have separated for years in bad accidents. That usually takes place on rusted or vehicles that aren't in their first accident. Old Bronco's and Blazers that have 100,000s of thousands of miles and lots of rust are good candidates. If you want confirmation of that, spend some time with guys in wrecking yards. They tell some great stories about how the things come to them.

I have two rolled jeeps to look at - both with one inch body lifts - I don't recommend more - and both held up fine in rolls and one street hit.

There is a whole lota reasons not to consider anything beyond two inches of body lift - I swear by my one inch lift. Two I did not need - and it would have screwed up too much stuff.

Just so everyone understands, 1" body blocks are often a good way to keep the driveline where it should be. By raising the front motor mounts it drops the Tcase. That changes the angle of the output shaft to your advantage. What also happens is that the front of the engine comes up at the fan. Body lift in very modest amounts repositions the radiator and shroud where it belongs.

A one inch body lift should also include a one inch motor mount lift so the fan sits in the cage correctly - cooling - cooling - cooling ...


The issue is - will a small and correct body lift separate in a roll or crash - I say not if it is done right and maintained.

Would a four inch body lift separate - I would guess that it would be more likely.

In both my rolls the lift was OK but the frame elements bent some - would that have happened without a body lift - most likely ...

When I did my 1" body lift, I did not have a fan shroud problem, I did not do a motor mount lift. All I had to do was trim one bottom corner of the fan shroud, taking off less than an inch wide piece at one bottom side.

Here in AZ the heat is so much of a problem that no one does that
here - you have to do everything you can to get the best low speed
flow you can - the motor mount lift only cost $110 and two hours
so if figured it was cheap insurance.

The drive line angle change also helped with my tcase and rear drive
shaft - gave back almost five degrees total. Mine rear cv shaft
was so close to the max, 20 degrees, that even a few degrees was a good thing.
Kept me from having to do a tcase drop .

Later when I put the flat RE center section in the angle change became
even more critical.

Anything beyond an inch starts pushing wiring, brakes lines, tcase
shifter,and fuel input line, to the point where they stop working - and you have to
replace them with new hardware.