Jeep Rover 110 7 passenger vehicle (JKUR+)

[gavan]

So rebuild the axles, swap around the suspension, buy some new shocks, use the best bits off 2 vehicles and then wheel it out in the sun!



neat. Do some questionable maneuvers and get the back out of the garage.



get your wife to spot you while you use the trusty tractor to wed these 2 bodies in unholy matrimony



wow. Doors fit. Body fits. Frame fits. Measuring works!

alright. Exciting conclusion later.

 

[gavan]

I’m no jscherb, but it quickly became apparent that the soft top would be difficult. There is a bulge in the roof too and the tops are significantly more narrow up front. So off to Craigslist. Found a cheap 2 door hard top to go with what was left of my 4 door hard top after the accident.

 

[gavan]

So a whole bunch of cutting and fitting of the floor and the rest of the body and the doors fit kinda almost decent. I mean it’s a jeep. It’s panel gap wasn’t amazing from the factory. Not a high bar. Note the missing triangle.



Out in the sun to assess the work. Actually coming together.





Kinda going for the big truck vibe. Old international and sterling crew cabs had the same idea.



I thought about fabricating my own door upper for a little, but I wasn’t all into cutting glass, and I wanted to use soft doors in the future. So it was nice to have the option of throwing more front doors at it.

 

[gavan]

So I took the factory windshield frame and skinned it and chopped the base off to match the angle of the b post. Then I welded it in. This way I could use the factory freedom panel attachments and match all the angles.



Plus now the kids have back seat sun visors which is pretty cool.

What happened next was an endless slog of cutting, sleeving and welding the upper cage parts together. No pics because it’s tedious and horrible.

But it worked. Now I have one vehicle.

 

[gavan]

Here you go. 3 rows of seats.





4 front seats. It actually works amazing. I have a car seat adapter in one now and it’s so great to have it on a long slide with height adjustment to get the car seat just right. Plus because it was designed as a 2 door the seats move out of the way to get into the third row, just really good all around.

I don’t know what to do about the sail panels. I got a big piece of black plastic and made a temporary solution. I want to make a plug but my fiberglass skills are very limited.




One of the little munchkins that caused all this work

 

[gavan]

By the way if you start asking for a driveshaft over 60 inches everyone gets itchy. But the shafts I got with the parts rig were Tom Woods and they said sure send them back!

Might be the longest jk shaft ever.

1310 cv’s and they run quiet with no vibes.

 

[gavan]

Door off life is fantastic




Beach life is fantastic.



Top off life is fantastic

 

[gavan]

Now it’s just fine tuning the little things. Trying to look at new paint schemes




I also got the Aev rims that were on the first concept I saw. It seems dumb but kinda makes me happy.

I have 2 door and 4 door sliders I need to combine Into one set for this pig.

 

[gavan]

So it has about 3 inches less wheelbase than a gladiator, but it’s about a foot and a half shorter so it drives like a porky jk or a nimble jt, depending on how you look at it.

The weight isn’t that much more and it drives like a 4 door acceleration wise. It has a big steering box and dodge 1500 brakes so any differences to the dynamics are more than covered up by those parts.

Lockers work, swaybar works. It has a 3 inch lift so the long belly doesn’t matter as much as much as it could. I welded the 2 gas skid tanks together so it is protected off road.

People rarely notice anything different about it. There are a lot of jeeps around here and it just looks like another one.

But we love it and the kids love it. Lots of room, 3 rows, plus fixed all the prior problems of the accident damage from the jeep.

Would I do it again? Probably not. Would I recommend it? Probably not. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely !

Any questions let me know. Just wanted to finish the thread out.

 

[shays4me]

Good content, thanks for posting! You’re a brave soul.

 

[Dan Grec]

This is incredible, thanks for bringing us along and for so many pictures.
I'm really curious what you do about that door triangle problem. If not for that it really would look factory.

I'm a bit confused about the rear doors that are on that concept that was at SEMA. Where did they come from?

Would I do it again? Probably not. Would I recommend it? Probably not. Am I glad I did it? Absolutely !

I love it! All good projects are this way!!

-Dan

 

[gavan]

I’m not sure. Apparently it was done by Quality Metalcraft back in the day, with help from aev. Which makes sense because the concept looks like it drove through the aev warehouse and picked up one of everything they offered in 2012.

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a1972801/long-wheelbase-stretch-jeep-wrangler-spied/

They look like the front of a rear 4 door window track mounted to the front of front door window track. That would fit the door opening in front.

I very seriously considered doing something like that then I realized I can’t cut glass, at least in my budget and skillset, and I can’t afford someone to cut glass. I thought about skinning it in steel with that piece in there and keeping the factory glass, but the sail panel won out.

I actually like having the sail panel for practical purposes. I can use soft doors, I can replace the rear doors without fabrication, just makes my life easier if not as purdy. But I’m not purdy.

Shopping around for billet silver metallic jeep to match my 4 door was the best move. No paint work, and because they are both beat up jeeps, the colors match perfectly.

 

[jscherb]

I'm a bit confused about the rear doors that are on that concept that was at SEMA. Where did they come from?

If I were doing a project like this, I'd use a piece from a second set of front doors and splice it into the bottom corner of the factory rear doors. In the first photo below I've outlined the section to cut from the a pair of front doors and in the second photo I've pasted it into place on the rear doors. It wouldn't be a very hard mod to do.

 

[Dan Grec]

If I were doing a project like this, I'd use a piece from a second set of front doors and splice it into the bottom corner of the factory rear doors. In the first photo below I've outlined the section to cut from the a pair of front doors and in the second photo I've pasted it into place on the rear doors. It wouldn't be a very hard mod to do.

But aren't the front doors longer than the rear doors, which is the whole reason to use all front doors?
Also I really like your idea, but the inside would be a pain I think.

-Dan

 

[jscherb]

But aren't the front doors longer than the rear doors, which is the whole reason to use all front doors?
Also I really like your idea, but the inside would be a pain I think.

-Dan

Yes, stock front doors are longer than the rear doors, but I saw that Jeep at SEMA and I don't recall the rear doors being wider the factory rear doors. I could be remembering it all wrong, it's been 12 years.

Doing it the way I suggest, the inside wouldn't be too difficult, since the modified doors would be the same width as the factory rear doors, you could use the factory interior panel and you'd fill that added corner with sheet metal painted body color and it would look fine.

But maybe I'm completely wrong and maybe the rear doors on the SEMA Jeep are really longer like the front doors.

If they did make the rear doors as wide as the front doors, a way to do that would be to use the factory front door lower half and build the upper window frame from the upper half of a factory rear door plus some extra bits from the frames of the front doors used to make the lower half of the doors beause you would need extra length in the frame You could splice the various weatherstrips and seals fairly easily, but you would need to have custom curved and tempered glass made for the wider windows - factory front windows could not be cut to shape for the rear because tempered glass cannot be cut. Cutting untempered glass to the correct size and shape wouldn't be difficult for any glass shop, but the glass would need to be curved during the tempering process - a curved form capable of withstanding the heat of tempering would need to be made. A custom glass company could do that but it wouldn't be cheap. When I did custom tempered glass for my JKU Safari Cab widows the glass shop had to send the cut blanks out to a special shop that did the tempering but mine were flat and I didn't need a curved form so they were not prohibitively expensive.