Barn Door for JK factory hardtops

[jscherb]

Very cool! Nice to have someone to work with. It's both motivating, and fun.
A lot of times I prefer to help friends work on their stuff to working on my own, just for that reason.
Looking forward to seeing how they come out and go together.

Thanks. It's been fun working with Tom - he's joined up with me on this project because he wants to learn fiberglass, and because he wants a barn door on his JK. He'll get both out of this project. He's learned fast and does great work - he did the outer skin mold last night without any help from me, and it turned out great.

I'm in the process of molding the first set of parts right now (without Tom, he's got a day job unfortunately). They'll be finished this afternoon and then they'll cure overnight and I'll pop them out of the molds tomorrow morning. I'll post photos of the parts tomorrow as soon as I pop them out of the molds.

 

[jscherb]

Done. Barn door #1 has been molded. Tomorrow morning I'll pop the parts out of the molds.

 

[Jurfie]

This project is so awesome! I'd be all over it if I'd bought a JKU...kinda wishing I had since I seem to be leaning more towards using my JK as a camping/overland type rig rather than a rock-crawler. Next one.

Your LJ is really cool, and that safari top is the cat's meow! Top notch work. I'd love a modular top for the JK; three pieces (top, removable sides), freedom tops, and barn-door would be ideal, in my opinion. The ability to run semi-open air, minimal storage requirements, and removable by one person = win.

 

[jscherb]

Here's the first set of barn door parts just out of the molds. I've done a quick trim to remove the sharp edges, and washed off the mold release.

Next up: test fitting them in the hardtop opening. Pix shortly.

 

[jscherb]

Testing how the inner skin fits in the hardtop opening. The outer edge is roughly trimmed to fit; the window opening isn't trimmed at all yet, final trimming will happen after the inner and outer skins are bonded together:

The outer skin. This won't be trimmed at all until it's bonded to the inner skin. I've taped a printout of the window to it.

And a view from the inside with the window printout in place:

The next step is to bond the inner and outer together and do a little more fitting and trimming.

 

[jscherb]

Up early to get a little work done today, I trimmed and fitted the inner and outer skins together. To align them correctly, I cut a preliminary window opening of the same size and location in both skins and by lining up the openings the two skins will be perfectly aligned. They're temporarily clamped together in these views of both sides:

The next step is to bond the two skins together with fiberglass mat between the mating surfaces.

 

[grimbo]

I always love finding another of your threads when I open up Expo.

Great job thus far can't wait to see the outcome of this one and your next project.

I loved to see a fibreglass insert that replaces the rear side windows with a flip up hatch and storage

 

[jscherb]

I always love finding another of your threads when I open up Expo.

Great job thus far can't wait to see the outcome of this one and your next project.

Thanks. I'm currently working on this barn door project, and in case anyone's missed it, I'm also finishing up my "TrailTop" fiberglass modular camper/trailer topper system project (http://www.expeditionportal.com/for...ot-modular-trailer-topper-building-components). Not sure what I'll do next, maybe I'll start on the full JK Safari Cab.

I loved to see a fibreglass insert that replaces the rear side windows with a flip up hatch and storage

That's a very straightforward fiberglass project, nothing complicated about that one. Molds for that could easily be made up in a few days. You would need two different versions to fit all years of the JK though - the '07-'10 side windows are smaller than the '11-present ones.

I wonder how many people would be interested in removing their hardtop rear side windows to install something like that?

 

[jscherb]

Here are a couple of drawings to simulate what the finished barn door will look like on an '07-'10 JK Unlimited.

The barn door painted to match the hardtop:

Painted to match the body color:

For comparison, here's the original photo I drew on:

I'm working on drawing some '11-present JKU simulations, showing the different hatch width options. I'll get them done and posted soon.

 

[Jurfie]

I'm impressed that you straightened the tire cover.

 

[Dan Grec]

Hi Jeff,

For the narrower opening hardtop (the older one), I'm wondering why you need to make a fiberglass panel at all?
It appears in the photo above the panel will be exactly the same size as the OEM glass.
Can you not just attach the OEM glass to the tailgate however you plan to attach your fiberglass panel?

Thanks,
-Dan

 

[jscherb]

Hi Jeff,

For the narrower opening hardtop (the older one), I'm wondering why you need to make a fiberglass panel at all?
It appears in the photo above the panel will be exactly the same size as the OEM glass.
Can you not just attach the OEM glass to the tailgate however you plan to attach your fiberglass panel?

Thanks,
-Dan

Maybe, but I'm not smart enough to know what would be necessary to attach the factory tempered glass to the tailgate and have it withstand the forces involved in slamming as a barn door. Unlike closing the factory hatch, the weight of the tailgate and a large spare would add force to the slam, and the heavy top-mounted wiper motor would add considerable force due to the leverage from being attached near the top end of the glass, so its a lot more force for the glass to deal with than one hand gently closing the hatch.

The fiberglass barn door on my LJ has handled plenty of slamming abuse over the past 4 years, so I'm very comfortable that a JK version will hold up just fine. I wouldn't be comfortable that the factory hatch glass mounted as a barn door upper could do the same.

And besides, I can make the fiberglass parts, install safety glass and a new wiper motor all for considerably less than the fragile factory hatch glass costs alone

 

[jscherb]

I did some drawing on a photo of Tom's 2014 JK in action. It's got the later model wide hatch, and I've drawn the barn door full width, but with the same glass as the narrower early hatch barn door.

One drawing has a hardtop-color hatch and the other a body-color hatch, but with all the mud there isn't too much difference

BTW he's towing one of my earlier fiberglass projects - a Jeep-tub trailer kit, which in this photo is also slathered in mud .

I'll post some close-ups of later model wide-hatch barn door variations tomorrow.

 

[Dan Grec]

Maybe, but I'm not smart enough to know what would be necessary to attach the factory tempered glass to the tailgate and have it withstand the forces involved in slamming as a barn door. Unlike closing the factory hatch, the weight of the tailgate and a large spare would add force to the slam, and the heavy top-mounted wiper motor would add considerable force due to the leverage from being attached near the top end of the glass, so its a lot more force for the glass to deal with than one hand gently closing the hatch.

The fiberglass barn door on my LJ has handled plenty of slamming abuse over the past 4 years, so I'm very comfortable that a JK version will hold up just fine. I wouldn't be comfortable that the factory hatch glass mounted as a barn door upper could do the same.

And besides, I can make the fiberglass parts, install safety glass and a new wiper motor all for considerably less than the fragile factory hatch glass costs alone

Thanks for the detailed reply. That makes perfect sense.

-Dan

 

[jscherb]

Here are some simulations of the barn door on a later model JK with the wider hatch opening. All of these are based on my current set of molds.

This first one is trimmed wider after coming out of the mold so it fills the hardtop opening, you can see how the hatch is wider than the tailgate. It's got the same size glass as the early model barn door simulations I posted yesterday. This first one is done in hardtop color:

The next one is trimmed narrow just like for the earlier hardtops, and it's got filler panels attached to the hardtop to make the opening smaller. In hardtop color:

In body color, a narrow door with filler panels:

Another way to do it would be to use the wider door as in the first illustration, but paint it so that it looks like one of the second two illustrations. For example, if the barn door were painted body color, the extensions could be "painted on" in hardtop color so it looked like the last illustration.

One more option I haven't shown above is a wide door with a wider window. The windows in all the illustrations above is the same window that's used in the narrow early model barn door. A wider window would require a different inner skin mold, which is easy to do but I haven't done it yet.

And the original unedited photo for comparison: