Category: Armor

Installed a JCR Offroad Evap Skid. The instructions on their website seemed our of date. They made it sound like you left the old skid in place, which mad no sense to me. I got rid of the old skid. There’s not much to it, so I think I guessed right. 

The hardest part was removing the connectors to the canister. There are these little U-clips on the hard lines that you have to pop out in order to remove them from the evap. I found a video on youtube that described it. Didn’t keep me from breaking one. Doh! No worries. It went back together OK and the two halves of the clip are holding the line on. I will replace them as soon as I can find a source.

With the 35″ tires on the Jeep, I didn’t feel comfortable with the spare being on the tailgate. I’d rather not just delete the tailgate carrier and put the spare in the back since I do use the back of the Jeep from time to time.

JCR Offroad to the rescue!. Installed the JCR Shield Tire Carrier to carry the load.

I have Rugged Ridge wheels on my Jeep that I bought from 4 Wheel Parts a year ago. Rugged Ridge has a rim protector designed to protect the rim when wheeling. My rims have quite a few scratches on them already. I’ve been wanting these protectors for a while.

A friend had a set he wasn’t using, so I finally convinced him to sell them to me. But they were painted Mango Tango. That wasn’t going to work for me. So I painted them blue.

In order to install them, I had to remove these decorative bolts that were already in the rims. They were rounded over and had hex key slots. But 50% of them were so damaged, that I couldn’t get a hex key in the slot at all. Some were so seized in the hole that they were easily stripped. In some cases I was able to hammer in an oversized torx bit in some of them and was able to get them out. For the others, I had to use a Dremel to flatten two sides of the bolt and use a Vice Grip to twist it out.

Decided to take off the Smittybilt side steps and replace them with JCR Classic Sliders. Looking forward to putting them to the test.

Got my new JCR Crusader Mid Width Bumper to replace the OR-FAB bumper that had rusted too early. I ordered the backup lights as well and wired them to the reverse lights. Man, they are bright. I am going to change that so they are switched instead.

Ordered a couple Tereflex heavy duty differential covers from Rebel Off Road. You can see the major difference in thickness between the stock and after market covers. The stock covers are like paper.

This was a fail simple install. I opted NOT to use a Lube Locker but to use off the shelf RTV for differentials I picked up from my local auto parts store. After removing the old diff fluid and the covers, I scraped off any remaining RTV from the factory. Some of it didn’t want to come off, so I put a wire wheel in my rotary tool to make sure it was perfect. I cleaned out the gears with brake cleaner and made sure there was no other debris. After applying RTV to the new diff covers, it was just a matter of lining up the bolts and tightening them down.

I decided to go to the 2014 JK Freak Fest at Rausch Creek. But I want to add a little additional protection to the underside of the Jeep. The stock skids (as if there is such a thing) just don’t protect enough. I didn’t have the money for a full set of Rock Hard skid plates. I heard some buzz about an engine skid plate from the same people that make the cheap knock off bumpers, e-AutoGrilles. This were priced for $109, which may have been a mistake on their part, since I see they are now going for $200.

It came packed fine and went in fine, except one of the bolt holes didn’t line up on the transmission cross bar. I might take it off next spring and fix that. Should be easy enough.

Ordered a pair of OR-FAB bumpers from Northridge 4×4. I was really excited to see how they looked on the Jeep once they were installed. Too bad I can’t see them!