It all depends. Firstly most people do not need an SYE until about 4" of lift. However everyone is different and I have heard people getting vibes at even 2".
If you need an SYE you need the following:
SYE: ~200
New rear drive shaft 350-450
New
rear adjustable control arms: $250
New rear adjustable track bar and bracket: $150 -350
The last is forgotten a lot as it isn't necessary off the bat but what ends up happening is because the control arms are used to point the axle pinion at the Transfer Case it ends up causing the track bar to bind at the axle side and could end up tearing the axle side bracket off. Not a great thing to happen.
You
never need a drop pitman arm unless the front trackbar is modified and dropped even if the lift you get provides a drop one. If you don't touch the axle side of the front track bar, you don't touch the pitman. You need to keep the track bar and the drag link parallel with each other. If you don't you get nasty case of bumpsteer.
One of the benefits of SYE is you can then do a tummy tuck which increases your clearance of your Transfer case by up to almost 2". Also depending on how the bushings in your existing control arms are you may want to look at doing all new control arms. Couple of companies have adjustable control arms using Johnny Joints that improve the ride and articulation. You are looking at spending about $1000-1200 to replace all 8 of them. The benefit with those as well is when you lift a Jeep your wheels start moving into the center of the vehicle due to the nature of the fixed CAs. Adjustables allow you to dial in the pinion angles for both the front and back and get the wheels back into the middle of the wheel wells.
What I did last year was get a Zone 3" lift which was about $499 and a Currie TJJ front Adjustable Trackbar (I needed a new TB as I had developed Death Wobble and took the opportunity to go with the best out there) and that was about $300. Looking back I should have looked at a kit that included new Control Arms all around as I think my bushings are probably going to be needing replacing in a year or two. But whatever.
Vibe wise, I have zero unless I am doing 45 and downshift and pin it, then it shows up for about 2 seconds and disappears.
What I would in your case is plan for the worst but expect the best. Get a cheap 3" lift (Zone or Rough Country are below $500 and you can get them through PJF) and put it on. If you find you are having minor vibes, get a 1" MML (I recommend
Brown Dog) and see if that takes it away. It is an upgrade as it lifts your engine a bit giving you a little more clearance under it. At that point you may want to start saving up and getting an SYE.
Dropping your TC skid is a workaround but when you think about it, you just lifted it for more clearance but then lost an inch because of the TC drop. You can do it but it should never be used as a permanent solution. The thing you learn about jeeps is that you go cheap, it will cost you more in the long run as you end up replacing it with something better. If I had the money I would have done
this. It comes with 3" lift, all adustable control Arms, new front trackbar and Currie Antirock for $2k. If you are a member of Jeepforum you get 10% off and I believe they will remove the antirock which would bring it down to about 1600-1700.
