Took advantage of some decent weather. Finally! Got up in the 60s, maybe even the 70s this afternoon.
I needed to wrap up a few things with the cage. When we first put the cage in for fitment, on BOTH the driver and passenger side uprights, the lower hole in the door seam did not line up. I can only assume that I screwed up in drilling the holes, or the upright didn’t sit in the Jeep as expected.
I contacted Rock Hard 4×4. I was a bit disappointed in their response. The suggested I make the hole bigger. Nope. That wasn’t going to work. I’d have to make it too big, plus the tapped part of the upright was so far forward that the bolt head would be in the corner.
My solution was a little more drastic, but better, in my opinion. I plug welded the original lower holes, ground it smooth and put the upright back in. This let me locate the correct position, I drilled and tapped a new hole. Success!
I also took the time to cut the corner trim to fit around the cage. I tried to follow Rock Hard’s instructions (and the video), but frankly, they suck. I did the passenger side first. But I cut out too much material. It doesn’t look bad, but there was no way I was going to be able to get it around the cage unless I cut a lot out.
Or so I thought. On the driver’s side, I tried a different approach. I took the upright out and fit the trim on the work bench. I cut out a lot less material. It’s a little harder to get around everything, but I think it looks better. I may get some kind of weather stripping to clean up the edges of the plastic.
I also trimmed the roll bar pads that go above the doors. I forgot to mention that when we did the original install, I had to trim the door surrounds to fit around the header bar. I’ll clean up the rough edges of the door surround with some sand paper next time I take the top down.
I was hoping to get a little more done. I still need to drill and tap the overhead center bar for two speakers. Then it can come out and get powder coated.