Barn Door for JK factory hardtops

[jscherb]

Someone asked me about the longer soft sides concept I posted earlier, they were wondering what you'd do if you wanted to run full rear doors. The longer soft sides could be in two pieces, with a zipper joining them. In this drawing, the back half is rolled down while the front half is open. If you were running rear doors, you'd remove the front half of the soft side.

Here are a few more variations of the concept...

If you didn't want to run the rear doors and wanted a more authentic J8 look, this next concept has rear door filler panels in fiberglass.

And this next one has the rear door fillers as above, but also has fiberglass hard upper doors in the front with a slider window.

I don't know if any of these make sense as commercial products, but all of them are very possible to build. (For that matter, I don't know if either the barn door or the modular JK Safari Cab make sense as commercial products either, but that doesn't stop me from designing and building them ).

 

[sseaman]

Your creativity is exceptional even if many of these variations don't make it to production.

 

[Jurfie]

Someone asked me about the longer sift sides concept I posted earlier, they were wondering what you'd do if you wanted to run full rear doors. The longer soft sides could be in two pieces, with a zipper joining them. In this drawing, the back half is rolled down while the front half is open. If you were running rear doors, you'd remove the front half of the soft side.

Here are a few more variations of the concept...

If you didn't want to run the rear doors and wanted a more authentic J8 look, this next concept has rear door filler panels in fiberglass.

That, sir, is genious. Personally, I'd run half doors in the rear with full sized fronts. Visually, I don't like that the door handles wouldn't line up, in that case, so I'd either run rear trail doors or delete the handles on the outside of the rear half doors (and fill) and access it from the inside via the front doors. Or go old-school hot rod style and have a remote release. ;-)

Given that I wouldn't use the back seats (removed), I would only open them occasionally anyways.

 

[jscherb]

That, sir, is genious. Personally, I'd run half doors in the rear with full sized fronts. Visually, I don't like that the door handles wouldn't line up, in that case, so I'd either run rear trail doors or delete the handles on the outside of the rear half doors (and fill) and access it from the inside via the front doors. Or go old-school hot rod style and have a remote release. ;-)

Given that I wouldn't use the back seats (removed), I would only open them occasionally anyways.

I thought about editing the rear seats out of the photo I drew the rear door filler panels on but decided it wasn't worth the extra time to do the editing .

 

[jscherb]

I finished building the molds the other day, so today I molded two JKU Safari Cab side panels. Tomorrow I'll pop them out of the molds and post photos of the parts.

 

[lax71vcu]

I was thinking the same thing, so I drew an awning on these photos. Even without the ursa minor camper top, the awning would be great for picnicking on the trail, don't you think?

The awning would attach to the hatch hinge mount locations, which are no longer needed with the barn door installed, and could roll up for travel, or be removed completely.

I was even thinking a longer than the jeep is wide awning with a simple bar with two L brackets to fit into two brackets on roof. Just a thought.... Now I just need to get my hands on the barn door...

 

[jscherb]

I was even thinking a longer than the jeep is wide awning with a simple bar with two L brackets to fit into two brackets on roof. Just a thought....

The only drawback to it being wider than the Jeep is that you'd probably want to remove it for driving, it might catch on trees on the trail or other obstacles on the road.

Another option that would work nicely with the barn door is a Foxwing awning (http://www.rhinorack.com/en-us/products/shade/awnings/foxwing-awning_31100), it would mount to the side of the hardtop and fan open to cover the back of the Jeep/barn door as well.

Now I just need to get my hands on the barn door...

If you were closer, you could do like Tom did - spend some time here learning a bit about fiberglass and then make your own barn door in the my molds. Oh well, I guess you'll have to wait and see if some company signs up to make it a production product .

 

[lysol]

If you were closer, you could do like Tom did - spend some time here learning a bit about fiberglass and then make your own barn door in the my molds. Oh well, I guess you'll have to wait and see if some company signs up to make it a production product .

If you were close, I'd love to do some fiberglass work.

 

[Jurfie]

If you were close, I'd love to do some fiberglass work.

Ditto. I wish I could find someone local to me who would be willing to teach! I'm full of ideas, but empty of skills.

 

[lysol]

Ditto. I wish I could find someone local to me who would be willing to teach! I'm full of ideas, but empty of skills.

Agreed. When I worked at an airport, there was a guy building a plane. When I would get off work, I went over to his hanger and helped him fiberglass some cockpit parts. Was pretty cool. He showed me how to resin the fiberglass properly for strength.

 

[Jurfie]

Agreed. When I worked at an airport, there was a guy building a plane. When I would get off work, I went over to his hanger and helped him fiberglass some cockpit parts. Was pretty cool. He showed me how to resin the fiberglass properly for strength.

People like that are the gems of the world; those who teach and share their knowledge and skills for no reason other than for the love of what they do. To those people (like jscherb): thanks!

 

[jscherb]

People like that are the gems of the world; those who teach and share their knowledge and skills for no reason other than for the love of what they do. To those people (like jscherb): thanks!

Thank you very much.

I'm happy for people to join me for work sessions to learn how to do stuff like this. It's worked out great with Tom, he's a talented engineer, so he's added value to the design process, he helped me make the mold masters and the molds for the barn door, and in the process he's learned enough about fiberglass work to mold his own barn door parts in the molds we've made.

Unfortunately Elmira NY isn't exactly in the mainstream, so other than Tom who lives in the next town over, it's hard for people to drop by regularly for work sessions.

 

[jscherb]

Here are the JKU Safari Cab side panels I molded yesterday, just out of the molds this morning - they haven't been trimmed nor has the mold release been washed off yet.

They are very similar to the sides of the factory hardtop, but differ in a few important ways:

- The window mounting surface is flat, so any RV-style or glass-and-gasket window can be installed (*).

- The radius of the corners of the window recess matches the outside corner radius of a typical RV-style or glass-and-gasket window.

- Mounting flanges have been added so the sides can bolt to the other modular Safari Cab parts (they're on the back side of the parts and can't be seen in the photo above).

Also I've made the window openings the same size as the later model hardtop windows - they're 4" longer than the early model hardtop windows. I did this so that any RV-style windows (such as sliders or swing-ups) that get made for the Safari Cab could also be installed in a late model factory hardtop. Installing an RV-style window in the curved mounting surface of a factory hardtop requires a little adaptation because RV sliders require a flat mounting surface and I have a plan to deal with adapting RV window to the curved surface of the factory hardtop.

(*) The window mounting surface in the molds is flat, but for these two prototype side panels I added an extra recess at the back of each window area. I plan to install kick-out vent windows, and the ones I plan to use mount in this recess. Ordinarily parts made in the molds wouldn't have this extra recess, but I added it by using an removable form inside the mold. I'll post more on the vent windows shortly.

 

[jscherb]

For this first prototype side panels out of the molds I plan to install kick-out vent windows as I said in my last post. I've got parts for an old Toyota FJ40 hardtop here that has kick-out vent windows, and they're an appropriate size to serve as vent windows in a JK hardtop, so I plan to install the Toyota vent windows in the Safari Cab sides. Here are the Toyota parts:

Here's what they look like on an FJ40:

In this next photo I'm holding an FJ vent window up against one of the Safari Cab side panels I just molded. Obviously the hardware will go on the inside of the window when it's installed, this is just to give an idea of what it will look like.

I'll be installing windows in these panels right after turkey day.

 

[jscherb]

Kick-out vent window installation under way.

A simulation of the fixed window: