Gear's Baja JK Thread

[HMR]

Jeremy here it is folded up.

Nice work Justin.
Perfect addition to my favorite Rubicon.

 

[Gear]

Well I worked on the awning a little today. This time I mounted it on the driver side. I painted the 12 gauge 1"x2" mounting bar. Added a few bolts and a couple end caps. The awning is now interchangeable between both sides of the Jeep.

 

[flyingwil]

Looks great. now you need a matching one on the other side, then you can just drive with them open and fly over obstacles!

J/K Looks great Justin!

 

[1leg]

I love that awning. I can't wait to sit under it my friend. Now you just need a engal 45....

 

[Gear]

I started on the Fairing today. Picked up a long piece of Aluminum and started to form it to the roof rack and the Jeep. I think I am going to use a piece of door edge trim to protect the Jeep paint from the fairing. Oh and I need to paint it.

 

[HMR]

Justin- You shaped that piece of aluminum yourself?!

That looks like a perfect fit. Excellent work!

 

[Gear]

Yes, I did the lower edge by sliding the aluminum sheet in between my tool box drawers and applying downward pressure. Worked pretty well. The upper bend that goes to the two bolts I had done at a local shop.

Thanks

 

[tdesanto]

The awning looks superb. That looks like it will provide a lot of shade. Can you educate a non-Jeep owner on the utility of the fairing? Those are nice, clean modifications for sure. Nice work.

 

[Gear]

tdesanto wrote

Can you educate a non-Jeep owner on the utility of the fairing?

Hi Tony,

The short answer is to control the wind noise going thru the rack.

The long answer is I built the roof rack with a fairing in mind. I purposely moved the front cross bar as far back as possible so that the fairing would have a good angle to the wind. On my last rack the front bar was located in front of the windshield. This caused my a lot of head aches when I tried to control the wind noise coming off this front bar. I ended up using a large diameter rack pad to minimized the air flow below the bar and above the Jeep.

On the JK the noise from this bar comes on at anything over 40 mph. So my quick fix was again another rack pad. This works well when the front T-tops are in place(hardtop). But if I remove the T-tops there is a 1" gap below the rack pad. The wind comes thru this opening.

Here is my old rack on an 03 Rubicon. You can see the bar is in front of the windshield. A fairing here would be concave to the windshield.

The JK with the T-tops removed. The air flows across the velcro seam of the rack pad makes a lot of noise.

The JK with the rack pad in place. This shows the improved angle of the cross bar compared to my 03 Rubicon.

Here is the new fairing built out of Aluminum. With any luck I might increase my fuel economy.

 

[Gear]

Painted the fairing. Installed some weather stripping. Here is the finished product.

 

[tdesanto]

Justin, that's excellent. Thanks for clarifying. I can see it better in the pictures you just added. That looks very clean and purposeful.

Have you had a chance to test it out? Any noise from drag behind it, like in a typical sunroof?

 

[keithro]

Nice work on the fairing, interested in hearing how it's working for you...I need to do the same thing.

 

[Gear]

I got the Jeep out on the freeway yesterday. The new fairing works well. I had the T-tops off of the Jeep. I can still hear the wind coming over the fairing but at least it is not whistling thru the roof rack. Some of the wind noise is coming from the awning now that it is mounted on the driver side. So far I like it a lot. The T-tops go one easier now that I don't have the roof rack pad taking up the space under the cross bar. This is a plus. I am going to play around with the noise areas and see if I can't tame them. I will post up when I get some more feedback.

 

[FourByLand]

Painted the fairing. Installed some weather stripping. Here is the finished product.

Just beautiful!

 

[Gear]

I did a quick trip up to Adventure Trailers this weekend. Picked up my new Eezi Awn 2200. Then I took off to Joshua Tree for the night.

On my way home I stopped off at the Salton Sea.