front vs rear frame stiffeners

Okay so I'm looking at doing some frame stiffeners and im noticing that hd off road engineering offers a front and a rear frame stiffener. Do I need both? It seems like for 150 bucks you get good steel already drilled with holes that follow along the unibody. why is there a front and a rear and can you recommend the cheapest way to do it all at once instead of 2 piece sets

I got all three, and wish I had sooner

The ups guy asked a week.later what all the klingon weaponry he had dropped off a week prior was for.

I'd get the full set mid, front and rear:

http://hdoffroadengineering.myshopify.com/collections/frontpage/products/xj-frame-stiffener-set

front and middle are by far most important. where I'm bending the front frame rail and denting the middle, the rear is showing almost no fatigue

wish I had gotten a full set on immediately. probably wouldn't be scrapping my xj right now

you could use 3x3x3/16 angle iron bumper to bumper

First, you seem a bit confused. HD Offroad actually has 3 separate pieces. Fronts, mids, and rears. They cover separate portions of the unibody frame rails. The best way to install them IMO is to just buy all three at once, and suck it up. Strip the entire frame rail front to rear, prep for welding, and just go to town. It's a lot of welding. It's almost all out of position. It sucks. But it's worth it!

I'd say the mids are most important to do early, because welding them onto beat up frame rails really sucks.

But if you need frame stiffeners, then you need them all. Not a partial set. If you are only doing one at a time, then I'd recommend mids, then fronts, then rears, in that order.

I find the rears to be the least important if your on a budget and especially if you run an aftermarket rear bumper. The stresses up front from steering etc. are known to do bad things to the front unibody without reenforcement.

HD off road has the cheapest Mid kit I think, WEbdog, (dirt bound) has the cheapest fronts, I was literally just shopping for a passenger side only (front only) and found the dirt bound for cheap, I made my own drivers side front plating, but it looks like crap and took a while, but it is .250 wall and and I plated under the rail not just the out side. whereas most stiffeners up front are .120 and only plate the outside. I figured for the pass side rail with no steering box and no track bar .120 should be ok.

FYI all HD Off-road stiffeners are 0.134 thick.

Ya take into account stronger fronts and things like free shipping, no tax, versus tax + shipping costs

You need both. I bent the rear frame rail coming down off a waterfall with my heavy duty bumper. Plated it and dident do it the next time I went do the same waterfall. You want to plate as much as you can, including the inside of the unibody if you can. The more you plate the longer it will last. My front is plated inside, outside and underneath, then each bolt hole for the bumper is sleeved with DOM. Overkill but worth it and it won't have a single problem now. The worse feeling is to tighten down your front bumper and watch the unibody crunch as you do it! With the sleeves it's harder then shit.

I got all my stiffeners from hooligan offroad engineer. He builds everything except the middle ones. But makes front and rear inside, outside and underneath plates. Well worth the money in my opinion. First thing I did on my new jeep when I got it and the jeep ride so much more solid then my old one did.