Friday, 30 June 2017

Pavement Ends Emergency Top

We finally had a break from the rain, and I had a few minutes with my Jeepin' buddy Nate to help put on the Emergency Top from Pavement Ends. This top is not meant to replace your soft top, it is meant to be a quick top to throw on when there's a threat of rain. I'm actually impressed with how easily it went on and off, and kinda wish I could find a real soft top (with windows) to run. It's slick.
 The top is very compact when folded, and they include two rain ponchos in the box. A nice addition for when you don't have doors on, or it's raining hard enough. May as well stay as dry as possible while getting it out.










The top has three adjustable straps. They attach to the top hinges, and hood tie down. Along with three elastic straps to hook over the tail lights and spare tire.











A nice feature, is that the back rolls up so you can drive at slow speed. I probably wouldn't go much over 60km/h (37mph) with it, it'll definitely be better than being soaked











Here's the top on and cinched down, as well as a view from the back all sealed up. There is a gap under the back flap, but it'll keep the water out for sure.





Saturday, 10 June 2017

Replacing a body mount on my TJ



While working on my tire a couple weeks back, I happened to take a forward glance while under my Jeep and saw something I didn't like. The under seat body mount was, well, not mounted. It had completely rotted through and wasn't actually holding the body up. Evidently this is a big enough problem that suppliers are now selling them new. They're called a "torque box". I picked mine up from 4 Wheel Parts.
 Closer inspection revealed that there was no saving this. The box had to be replaced through the mid-section. For now the front and rear mounts are in alright shape. This was the one that worried me.
 I dropped my rocker guard and pulled the three body mount bolts (which were in terrible shape too) and what was left of the mount practically fell onto the driveway.


I spent some time trimming to get the replacement to match up. Bolted it to the frame, dropped the body down, and with a mix of welding and rivets attached it to the body.

I had to take a short break to go to get some new bolts for the body mounts since out of the three that came out, only one (in the picture) had any threads left.

That'll do, that'll do.