Phase VI - Off Road Gear!

Ahhhh……… the Christmas festivities are finally over. It’s time to get back to reality and have some fun in the shop with the Jeep build.

A few weeks back we picked up the Jeep from the Body Shop with our brand new look. So now the fun part starts in outfitting the Jeep with some Off-Road gear.

First we’re going to replace the original seal beam headlights lights with a pair of IPF 920H 7” round lens’s from ARB. The lens’s are Prism and Column Cut to produce a 15 degree rise in the outside edge light pattern to provided a better view of the road shoulder. The beauty of this new lens housing is that you can use a aftermarket H4 High/Low Bulb to get a brighter output to increase visibility. This simple upgrade is a must for all Jeep owners. They’re available in the 7” Round & 7” Rectangular for YJ’s, TJ’s and JK’s.

On the right is the original seal beam headlight and the new IPF light is on the left

We’re installing the IPF H4 130/170w bulbs in the new housing. This should really light things up.

Before

After

Now for some more exterior styling. We’re going to be installing BUSHWACKER’s latest Flat Fender Style Flares to give our Jeep an old school look. (97-06 TJ’s & Unlimited - #10920-07 and 07-10 JK 4dr - #10918-07) Click to download BUSHWACKER’s Flat Fender Special - Flat Fender Rebate

These flares do take some time to put on especially taking off the old originals. So as dumb as it sounds, be sure to read the instructions before install the flares or you’re going to be taking them on and off a few times.

The Flat Fender Flares are a direct bolt on in the factory holes. Bushwacker provides all the necessary hardware and trim in the kit, including a new LED signal light on the front flares. On our Jeep, most of the fasteners were corroded and simply broke off, so we had to improvise when installing the new flares.

The first thing you have to do is install the mounting brackets in the factory holes. The reason for this is for the flares to mount over the bracket to give a clean seamless install. There’s about 3 brackets per wheel well to be fitted.

As I mentioned earlier most of the factory flare hardware had to be removed due to being in rough shape. Here I had to reinstall some ¼” thread crush nuts back into the body to mount the flare brackets.

When mounted in you can see in the picture it’s a flush mount application.

Now that I’ve attached the body trim to the flare, I simply slide the flare over the bracket and screw them together. As you can see this will give us adequate tire coverage and also give is the Classic Jeep Flat Fender look on our modern TJ.

Since I’m working on the flares, I might as well put the ARB Rock Sliders (#4450010) and make sure they work with the new Flares.

I always wanted to install these sliders and to my surprise, they’re very easy to install. The protection and coverage the Rock Sliders give are unbelievable. A lot of time went into these when designing them.

As you can see ARB’s Rock Slider give you superior side coverage on the side and under the rocker panel for when your traversing over big boulders and stumps. They also provide brackets that mount on the inside of the rocker panel to give more strength and support for the rocker panel.

Wow!! We’re in luck.

Mind you there was a little persuading and massaging I had to do to get them to work but they just barely fit between the new flares I just installed.

What I had to do is take off the rear fender flare, hold the Rock Slider in place and then mount the fender flare back on. As you can see I had about a 3/16” of room to work with, but it worked.

Now that’s a tight fit!

Front

Rear

So I’ve got the slider in place and there’s 6 holes on the face of the rocker panel that need to be marked for drilling. Now I have to take off the rear flare in order to remove the rock slider to drill through the rocker panel.

Now that I’ve got the holes drilled out, I can now reinstall everything back together again and bolt the sliders up to the rocker panel with the support bracket on the backside for the added strength.

To secure the bottom, ARB supplies 3/16” pop rivets to fasten the bottom portion of the sliders to the bottom of the body. There’s about 14 pop rivets per slider.

Here’s the final look of the flares the rock sliders mounted together.

Stay tuned for more as we mount up the ARB Front & Rear Bumpers with the Swing away Tire Carrier.

Every you’ve seen today can be purchased through one of our 15 Locations throughout BC & Alberta or on Cap-it’s Online website

For more information about any other ARB Products, you can visit them at www.arbusa.com