In this episode of the San Diego Jeep Club project build, we get a team of our good friend together to get down to the work of installing all aluminum armor on the project Jeep Wrangler JK. We start with GenRights JK Low Profile Winch Guard w/ Grill Bar Front Bumper, then the Jeep JK Swing Out Rear Tire Carrier and Bumper Package, Jeep JK Front and Rear Fender Package and last their Rocker Guards with Rash Guards.
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So we had about 10 members from the San Diego Jeep Club in the garage to help with this project. We split off into teams and began tackling sections of the Jeep.
Charlie and John got right to work on removing the old fenders, which just requires popping out a few plastic pins and some elbow grease.
Taking the time to mask up the fender areas they were going to be drilling was very helpful in allowing them to have better visibility of the holes they were marking and to prevent to chipping the paint when drilling. It’s this kind of preparation that makes installs like this a little easier
and masking everything up for the holes that would need to be drilled to install the new fenders.
When it comes to drilling into the body of your Jeep, you really want to double and triple check your measurements and alignment, just one misaligned hole can cause you some challenges.
Initially they started off using a standard drill bit, but switching over to a step drill bit and parking the needed depth with a little tape it made things a little easier.
To install the fenders and side armor, the team was going to be installing many nut inserts. Having a solid nut insert tool will make your life much easier, and Charlie is going to explain how to do this here in a minute
I have to say, these Genright aluminum flat fenders look awesome and being less than half the weight of steel fenders is a big benefit and now they providing some extra clearance for bigger tires to come…. this is a worthy upgrade!
Up next is the Genright aluminum bumper with the grill guard. It’s made from 3/16 aluminum and while light, is very solidly built.
Joe and Chappy were on front bumper duty and they will tell you, removing the old bumper was a breeze, but installing the new one was not the quick bolt on they expected.
This bumper included a low profile winch mount which allows the winch to sit lower than most other bumpers and it’s allow for maximum airflow to the radiator.
The directions that came with the kit were very good and had lots of pictures.
The guys quickly realized that they were going to be a lot of cutting on this install, and thankfully we had a plasma cutter and were able to make quick work of this, but you could do this with a cutting wheel and grinder if needed.
A quick step that is often overlooked, be sure to paint over any exposed metal from all the cutting to prevent rust down the road.
Because the winch plate sits pretty low, relocating the vacuum pump is necessary and while Genright does supply the relocation bracket, it’s not as easy as it look. The guys were working with some really tight spaces to get it mounted and was giving them a bit of a hard time.
The Rear bumper is also made out of 3/16” aluminum alloy and mounts really tight to the frame and is going to really improve the departure angle of this Jeep.
I think the rear bumper team thought they had the easiest job, but installing this bumper with it’s tight tolerances, wasn’t so simple.
There is a lot, and I mean a lot grinding of the rear frame required to get the bumper to fit up nice and snug. I think we lost count of how many time we test fitted, grinded, test fitted and grinded some more before getting the bumper mounted.
The kit did include some recovery hardware that just requires a little drilling and some patients to get mounted.
Can be used with or without the trailer hitch, and because they don’t plan on doing any towing this this Jeep, they opted to remove it.
The tire carrier is made from 6061-T6 aluminum and is 4-point polyurethane mounting, meaning this is going to be rattle free.