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OEM Skid Plate Removal

V

vikingxj

NAXJA Forum User
Location
Bellingham, Washington
I'm trying to remove my skid plate from my Jeep, but it does not want to come off. I'm trying to figure out a way to get the skip laid off so I can mount a trailer hitch. I have been spraying it down with PB Blaster for the last few days, and it still does not want to loosen up. Does anybody have any suggestions? hasta
 
Take the bumper off and spray your penetrant down the unibody rails so it can work on the ends of the bolts and the nut strips.
 
Those bolts get very rusty. If you have a torch, you may want to use it but watch out for the penetrant flaring up. Otherwise a big 1/2" impact wrench with no extensions. Be prepared to buy new nut strips, so start spraying those bumper bolts too. You may need to replace the bolts. PB Blaster is not the greatest penetrant either. Kroil or Shaeffer's Penetro 90 work better in my experience. Coat the replacement bolts with anti-seize to eliminate future corrosion problems.
 
Heat works 100x better than penetrating oil. It MAY work if you spray it for a weeks, maybe not tho. Only thing I really use it for now is to lube threads to prevent stubborn nuts from galling as they come off.
 
N8N_99xj said:
Might as well order some JCR or similar nutstrips now.
Click to expand...

That's exactly what I did. I plan on either grinding or shearing the bolt heads off and just removing the nut strip and then putting the new one inside the unibody. I removed the bumper, primed and painted it satin black and have been doing all of the fenders too. The fenders are flat black and I'm going to do the same with my front bumper and corner fenders. I even painted the headlight bezels black. The rear bumper came off without much of an issue. The bolts were fairly rusty, but I cleaned them up on my wife wheel and lubed them with some aluminum anti seize by Permatex.

:repair:
 
I ended up getting the nut strips out after using a nice long breaker bar and some muscle. Sheared one off and thr others came off with some coaxing...I had to enlarge thr hole at the end of the unibody so the strip would come out as the end of one of the bolts was too tall.

I'm already planning on using the JCR nut strips. They were $40 and will make removal of the skid plate easy if I have to do it in the future for some reason.

I also popped thr headlight bezels and grille out and painted them a satin black along with the aluminum headlight retention rings.
 
Well, I'm disappointed to say the least. I ordered the nut strips and roof rack mounts from JCR on Apr 25 and called to see what the order status was yesterday. They hadn't even shipped them out as they said the anticipated wait for the rack mounts was late this week (May 5th) at the earliest and latest sometime next week!

It must be nice not to have to worry about getting parts foe your vehicle like they do, but I want to put my Jeep back together. I wish they would have just shipped the nut strips separate. If I knew it would be over ten days for the other parts, I wouldn't have ordered them! What really annoys me is that they didn't say "Out of Stock" on their website and I didn't get an email once they processed my order saying, "Hey, we goofed. Its going to be a little bit until it ships."
 
Hmmm. I think I have a stock skid plate with trailer hitch. My 01 may have an aftermarket gas tank side plate, but I don't think my 97 Up Country is aftermarket, and it has a U-Haul type trailer hitch???
 
vikingxj said:
It turns out you cannot mount a stock skid plate with an aftermarket trailer hitch as well.
Click to expand...

It's pretty common to use them together. I had an OEM hitch and rear skid, and the hitch rusted out inside so I replaced it with a Curt 13160 round tube - it fit the OEM skid just fine.

What model hitch do you have and what exactly is the issue you are having?
 
I used to run a Reese hitch with my OEM gas tank skid.
 
Curt square tube hitch 13084 also works with stock skid, although a factory hitch would be better as the Curt's receiver hangs below the cross tube. It's just temporary for me until I can mount an offroad bumper and it was dirt cheap.
 
I run a PureJeep gas tank skid (not recommended) and a Hidden Hitch. They did not quite fit together so I put them together on the ground, marked the skid and notched the top/back of it to fit my hitch like a glove. THEN, I welded the two together. They go on and off WAY easier as one piece. ;-)

-AA
 
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