Barn Door for JK factory hardtops

[jscherb]

A testament to the strength of the MORryde tailgate reinforcement... I was rear-ended while waiting at a stoplight this afternoon. I think the woman who hit me ws distracted by her cell phone because she instantly got out of the car and had the phone in her hand. The bike and bike rack I had on the back were destoyed and pushed into the spare:

Here's the damage to her car after the police had her back up a foot or two:

No real damage to the Jeep - the tailgate is fine and works properly. The hitch is angled up slightly, it can probably be bent back to level with a long enough lever.

It was my brother-in-law's bicycle, I was borrowing it while I'm here in Florida visiting mom. I've already talked to the woman's insurance company and they will pay for a replacement bike and bike carrier.

I sent these photos to MORryde to show them how well the tailgate reinforcement did, and they replied:

Press release

MORryde Tailgate Reinforcement beats up on SUV!

I think he was kidding, I don't think they're doing a press release .

 

[rubicon91]

A testament to the strength of the MORryde tailgate reinforcement... I was rear-ended while waiting at a stoplight this afternoon. I think the woman who hit me ws distracted by her cell phone because she instantly got out of the car and had the phone in her hand. The bike and bike rack I had on the back were destoyed and pushed into the spare:

Here's the damage to her car after the police had her back up a foot or two:

No real damage to the Jeep - the tailgate is fine and works properly. The hitch is angled up slightly, it can probably be bent back to level with a long enough lever.

It was my brother-in-law's bicycle, I was borrowing it while I'm here in Florida visiting mom. I've already talked to the woman's insurance company and they will pay for a replacement bike and bike carrier.

I sent these photos to MORryde to show them how well the tailgate reinforcement did, and they replied:



I think he was kidding, I don't think they're doing a press release .

Oh no Jeff Dang I am sorry to see that. Glad you are ok. Hope this doesnt change any plans you had before leaving FL. Unreal!!!

 

[jscherb]

Oh no Jeff Dang I am sorry to see that. Glad you are ok. Hope this doesnt change any plans you had before leaving FL. Unreal!!!

Thanks Donny. Other than the bike and bike rack, it wasn't a very big deal, no injuries and it doesn't change my plans - I'm on my way to Key West right now.

I'm convinced that without the tailgate reinforcement I would have ended up with a bent tailgate and if I was running the cast factory spare carrier that would have been cracked by the impact. Overall a good test of the parts .

 

[ex m38a1er]

You know....if you were driving in Europe and this happened,,you would be the one to be paying....crazy..I know...but any (bike) rack that extends
the (original) length of your car (Jeep) is illegal...

 

[jscherb]

 

[jscherb]

I'm back from my trip now and one of the things on my to-do list for this week is to mold a third grille. This one will have buckets to recess factory turn signals in it. On the factory grille, the turn signals are aimed straight ahead which means that due to the curve and slope of the grille face the turn signal bucket is angled with respect to the grille face. Here's a photo of a factory grille, you can see that at about the 10:30 position the lens is flush with the surface of the grille, but at the 4:30 position the lens is recessed almost a half inch back from the grille face.

So for this grille I made tapered inserts for the mold to match the factory turn signal buckets exactly. I didn't do this for the smaller LED recesses I made for the second grille because I thought they'd look best flush all around, but since the factory angles them and I'm using factory turn signals for this grille I decided to match the factory angle. If you check back to the photos I posted of the second grille you'll see the LEDs are flush all around.

At left below is a work-in-progress mold insert to match the factory angle of the turn signal. At right both inserts are sitting in the mold - in this photo they're centered under the headlights. I could mold them there, or I could mold them slightly outboard of center as in the Safari Concept in the second photo below. I think they'll look better centered, but anyone who has an opinion should speak up because if someone signs up to manufacture and market this grille it's likely I'll send this grille to be scanned for manufacturing the production mold.

The Safari Concept has the turn signals slightly outboard of center:

I probably won't mold the grille until later in the week - I'm working on another Jeep fiberglass project and I want to get a mold for that project done before I make the mess of molding parts, that way I can mold this grille and the part for the new project at the same time (one mess and process, two parts ).

 

[jscherb]

The stove I use with the Trail Kitchen is a very compact butane unit. It's inexpensive (they start at about $25), has plenty of heat and stores easily. Its single burner is fine for my needs. But one thing these stoves lack is a wind guard, so in windy conditions the flame can be affected. This morning I made a wind guard. It's very simple, a 1 1/4" wide strip of 16-gauge stainless steel, sized and bent to fit snugly around the pan support. The stove will fit in the original carrying case with the guard installed, so it's no problem to stow.

But about the original carrying case - it's made of a cheap plastic that's starting to crack, so today I also sewed a storage bag for the stove out of heavy vinyl:

 

[jscherb]

I molded another JL-style grille for the JK yesterday; this one has recesses to accept factory turn signals:

Two weeks ago I molded one with recesses to accept smaller (2 1/2") LED turn signals, here's the new grille next to thae one:

 

[jscherb]

Ever since I built the prototype Overhead/Swing-Down Molle panels they've been in use in both ky JKU and LJ in a somewhat unfinished state - when I first installed the unfinished prototypes I liked them so much I put them right to use and didn't remove them to finish up a few details - until now. Here's the unfinished prototype in use in the JKU, all of the parts are raw metal and not in final form, swung down on the left and stowed on the right:

And here's the finished version:

A few weeks ago I sent the engineering details and specs off to a company that wants to manufacture/market it, so hopefully they'll be available in the not-too-distant future.

 

[jscherb]

Here's what the grille I just molded looks like with turn signals installed. The grille is next to the one with 2.5" LEDs; the LEDs are brighter (check the reflection on the floor in the first photo) and what I didn't expect is that they're also brighter from a side angle.

Might paint one of these and install it on my Jeep, but no hurry to do that since the first grille is still looking good too. And I haven't yet decided which variant I like best.

 

[jscherb]

When I take the JKU on a camping expedition with Trail Kitchen inside and the tent on top I usually increase the storage space available inside by removing the rear seat. It's a good place to store the second spare I usually take on expeditions, as well as lots of other gear.

I've been thinking about making a storage compartment to use when the rear seat is removed; it would have a flat floor and hinged hatches to access gear stored inside. The flat floor would run all the way up to the back of the front seats.

In the process of thinking about that design, I've also been wondering how useful storage compartments under the seat might be. On trips like the one I was just on, I had the rear seat in place and stored a lot of things under the back seat. If the bolts securing the front feet of the seat bases to the floor are removed, the seat bases can swing up like compartment hatches. A compartment might look something like this quick drawing:

One drawback to this idea is that with the compartments in place the rear seat will no longer fold down - the compartment is in the way. I've got a design to make the compartment walls easily removable, so if the need arises to fold the seat down while on a trip the compartments can be removed and stored flat.

I know a compartment with a flat floor for use when the back seat is removed would be very useful, but I don't know how useful the underseat compartment would be for most people. If you carry passengers in the back and want to store gear under the seats it could be very useful because the compartment would keep the gear from sliding out and getting in the way of the rear seat passenger's feet. What do people think of the idea?

 

[jscherb]

I've been working on molds for fiberglass hard uppers for factory half doors. I started this project some time ago but had to put it aside for a while due to other commitments and more pressing projects but in the last week I've gotten back to it and made good progress. So far I've been working on the rear uppers because it's possible to make one set of molds that work for both sides. Next I'll do the fronts, which require separate molds for each side.

Here's a completed rear upper:

I'm calling this a "hard shell retrofit" because it reuses the well-designed/high quality factory upper inner shell and re-skins it in fiberglass to create a hard upper. The design retains what's good about the factory uppers - the high quality inner shell, factory weather sealing, factory installation to the lower door, and it upgrades/replaces what's not so good - it replaces the soft outer shell with a paintable hard shell and replaces the vinyl/zipper window with a glass slider.

This one is painted "hardtop black", but being fiberglass it could be painted body color with gloss clearcoat to match the body. Here's the upper posed next to a spare factory hardtop I've got in the backyard... I don't have half doors on my Jeep so I can't show any photos of it on a Jeep...

Over the next few weeks I'll make the molds for the front and I'll mold some more rears and some fronts for testing. Not having half doors for my JKU so I can't fully test these just yet. I've been looking for a set of half doors but haven't scored yet .

 

[jscherb]

If I did the half door uppers in black as in my previous post, they'd look like this with my hardtop:

They'd probably look better painted body color:

Or maybe hardtop color:

If they were painted hardtop color they'd also match the roll-up soft sides...

Soft sides rolled down:

Soft sides rolled up:

Everything removed:

 

[JDsJeep]

Match the hardtop tan. Looks fantastic!

 

[jscherb]

In May I made a prototype set of HD hood hinges to match the styling of the HD tailgate hinges and HD door hinges. I posted this photo at the time comparing them to a factory hood hinge:

Travel and other higher priority projects have kept me from installing them on the Jeep until now.

Like the tailgate and door hinges, these are designed for easy attachment of accessories, like a HiLift mount. Unlike the factory hinges, accesories bolt to the hinges without disturbing the bolts that secure the hinges to the hood.

The brackets holding the HiLift are the same ones that I've shown before on the door hinges, so if you have both the door hinges and the hood hinges, you can mount the HiLift either on the hood hinges, the door hinges or the tailgate hinges as the needs of your current expedition dictate. The jack is shown on the rear door hinges in this photo but it can also mount on the front door hinges.

Same mounts used on the tailgate hinges:

Since it's so quick to install and remove accessory mounts the mounts can be installed only when needed for an expedition - the mounts and the HiLift wouldn't have to live on the Jeep all the time.

The Multipod LED brackets I did last year bolt right up too.

The Multipod mounts optionally support two or three light pods per hinge (this photo was taken when I was doing the Multipod project).

A view showing the hood and door hinges.