aaronb
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Oklahoma City
I haven't owned my XJ long (used to own a TJ). I put some 32's on it and budget lifted it 2 inches and took it out to see what would happen. I went with a friend of mine down to Arbuckle Offroad Park in Oklahoma. It was kind of fun, but kept burying the tires in the fenders. I know it needs to be lifted more and that will come in time, but even still, I was gonna trim the fenders up anyway.
Didn't have a lot of money this weekend, but I had lots of spare time and plenty of 10 gauge steel to play with, so I went to town. There will be lots of things I'll do eventually. This is just where I started.
From reading, I got the impression most people don't cut the fenders back past the welded seem, but I wanted it cut back father than that. I cut them twice. Once around the flared edge and then I cut flare off flush without cutting the inner fender. I wanted some meat hanging out so I could weld it back.
Welding it was tricky business. It's super thin and even at my lowest settings it wanted to burn through it.
I used a sharpie and drew some reference lines and measurements on the fender and then took a few pictures of it. I used those in my computer to create the drawing to cut out the armor. I cut a few prototypes out of some scrap 16 gauge and made some adjustments.
I was going to just break the metal for the contours, but there's a bit of a convex curve to it along the horizontal axis so I decided to cut long lines where the bends would be. That let me bend it along that horizontal curve, screw it in place and then tack welding while on the Jeep. That way when I took the screws out, it retained that curve.
Of course, I couldn't be happy with simple, so I kept adding more to it until I basically had a new 10 gauge fender.
After a lot of welding and grinding it started to take shape. After grinding I weighed it and it came in a 24.5 pounds. Not awful.
The finished part almost didn't fit into my little oven. I keep meaning to build a bigger one so I can fit bumper-sized things in it, but I just haven't yet.
Overall, I like how it turned out. The powder coat turned out a little blotchy, but I'll reheat and put a second coat on it once I order more powder. I was low on powder and had the air up to high for it to come out right.
I'm also going to build a new metal tail light housing. I thought about LEDs, but I think I'm just going to use the factory bulbs and build a housing with a red, amber and white plastic lens on it.
Anyway... now all I need is another free weekend so I can build the other side. Actually, the other side won't be that bad. I have most of the computer work and measuring is done, so it's just a matter of making mirror copies. The other side will go much faster.
There will be all kinds of things I plan to do to this thing. It will get a real lift kit, maybe different axles, different rims, lockers, possibly engineer some long arms for it, lift the gas tank, and so on. I was just wanted to do something this weekend with it. Rockers are next (I crushed the passenger side pretty bad already last weekend).
Didn't have a lot of money this weekend, but I had lots of spare time and plenty of 10 gauge steel to play with, so I went to town. There will be lots of things I'll do eventually. This is just where I started.
From reading, I got the impression most people don't cut the fenders back past the welded seem, but I wanted it cut back father than that. I cut them twice. Once around the flared edge and then I cut flare off flush without cutting the inner fender. I wanted some meat hanging out so I could weld it back.
Welding it was tricky business. It's super thin and even at my lowest settings it wanted to burn through it.
I used a sharpie and drew some reference lines and measurements on the fender and then took a few pictures of it. I used those in my computer to create the drawing to cut out the armor. I cut a few prototypes out of some scrap 16 gauge and made some adjustments.
I was going to just break the metal for the contours, but there's a bit of a convex curve to it along the horizontal axis so I decided to cut long lines where the bends would be. That let me bend it along that horizontal curve, screw it in place and then tack welding while on the Jeep. That way when I took the screws out, it retained that curve.
Of course, I couldn't be happy with simple, so I kept adding more to it until I basically had a new 10 gauge fender.
After a lot of welding and grinding it started to take shape. After grinding I weighed it and it came in a 24.5 pounds. Not awful.
The finished part almost didn't fit into my little oven. I keep meaning to build a bigger one so I can fit bumper-sized things in it, but I just haven't yet.
Overall, I like how it turned out. The powder coat turned out a little blotchy, but I'll reheat and put a second coat on it once I order more powder. I was low on powder and had the air up to high for it to come out right.
I'm also going to build a new metal tail light housing. I thought about LEDs, but I think I'm just going to use the factory bulbs and build a housing with a red, amber and white plastic lens on it.
Anyway... now all I need is another free weekend so I can build the other side. Actually, the other side won't be that bad. I have most of the computer work and measuring is done, so it's just a matter of making mirror copies. The other side will go much faster.
There will be all kinds of things I plan to do to this thing. It will get a real lift kit, maybe different axles, different rims, lockers, possibly engineer some long arms for it, lift the gas tank, and so on. I was just wanted to do something this weekend with it. Rockers are next (I crushed the passenger side pretty bad already last weekend).
