chopping out the rear fender wells, do i lose strength

...from the unibody. seen a member from the board had done it and i thought it looked nice, so would i lose strength in the unibody or any other structure.

the amount of strength you lose depends on where you're cutting it and how much you cut it. in the wheel well if you cut past the pinch seam you'll lose a lot of strength, but i'm pretty sure it can be welded back together. also, if you cut the rear quarter panel, there ends up being a gap between the outwe sheet metal and the pastic on the sides of the trunk space. i had my rear's trimmed for bushwackers but didnt go past the pinch seam, but trimmed the rear quarters a lot. it's possible to weld a piece of metal to close off the gap, but i haven't yet. the only thing i notice since the bushwackers and rear quarter panel trimming is a LOT MORE road noise and some squeaking from the area. but my XJ's a tank, so it just adds to the effect.

hope that made some sense

I recently did a rear chop where I cut pretty much even with the tailights along the side of the Jeep and up to the wheel well. I WAS going to keep a certain amount of a triangle shaped area behind the wheel well by bending some of the outer quarter panel in to meet the downward portion of sheet metal coming from the inner panel. However when I got in there, I realized the pieces of sheet metal were very thin and provided almost NO support to anything. So, I went ahead and folded that inner sheet metal piece up to a flat horozontal position and cut it where it fit against the outer quarter panel sheet metal piece pretty much like everyone else has done. The REAR facing metal below the tailight does seem to provide support and strength, so I only cut a little of this off at an angle from where the outer sheet metal now bends under to a spot where there is some extra bracing on my '98. So, I feel that there isn't much strength loss if the sheet metal is folded over and attached to each other and the rear piece is only cut at an angle. If you do a search on this site, you will find a few threads showing good pictures of the standard cut and fold procedure. Here is a great thread with pictures. http://www.naxja.org/forum/showthread.php?t=29750&highlight=cut+rear+quarter I did basically what he did, except I cut that back facing metal from where his red line ends in the first pic to upper right corner of the blue lines in that first pic at an angle. He cut that whole piece out which is probably ok, but I felt the angle cut would provide more support for the rest of the rear quarter panel corner. Jeff

Got any pics?

like this is what im trying to ask, is my Frameless wonder gonna fold or what. see how his rear wells are gone,

i want to do something like that but i was also thinking of cutting a in. before the supports that are on top of the wells, and cut the outside fender the way i want it and still maintain the support it has.

I imagine that guy is building his own wheel wells which he will set in and weld to the body. Nothing wrong with that. I cut 2 or more inches past the seam and pounded the metal back and up and welded it back together again with the help of some triangles of metal sheet. On full stuff my 35's rub the side of the wheel well but don't rub the outer lip which was what I was shooting for.