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For a long time I have been wanting rocker protection for my
XJ, yet the idea of losing ground clearance was never appealing. The
procedure of cutting out the stock rocker panel and replacing it with
something much stronger is getting more and more common.
A secondary goal of this project is to see whether or not my
new rockers will work as air tanks for an on-board air compressor setup. I
have yet to continue with this end of the project.
After seeing quite a few successful projects like this, I
decided to take the saws, grinders and welder to my Jeep. One long weekend
later, here is how things worked for me. |
| I started by removing the front fender flare and partially removing
the front fender. There is enough give in the fender to allow working
around the fender. Complete removal seemed to be more complicated than
necessary. I used a spring clamp wedged in between the fender and the
fender well to keep enough working space. |
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| Removal of the rear flare is necessary too. The metal that the bottom
of the flare mounts to is part of what gets replaced. |
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Here you can see the original rocker piece as it is being removed. I
found that a reciprocating saw was the tool of choice here. It pretty much
cut like butter. My first thought was a cutting disk on the 4.5" angle
grinder, but the disk seemed to burn up fast and was too difficult to
access the pinch seam.
The bottom cut was right along the pinch seam and the top cut was right
below the horizontal plane of the door opening. |
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| This is a view of the area after cutting and cleaning with the angle
grinder. The reciprocating saw does not allow for perfectly straight cuts,
so the hand grinder was used to fix this and make sure that edges were
raw, clean and weldable. I also drilled some holes through the pinch with
the plan of running some rosette welds at each of these points. |
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I chose to use 1/4" steel 3" x 4" tubing for the main part of the
rocker replacement. Some may feel that this is overkill, but with the
potential of using it as an air tank and considering that going from 3/16"
to 1/4" added only perhaps 15 lbs per rocker, I wanted to know that I will
never do much more than put scratches on these replacements.
Here you see the 3/8" thick end caps. Notice they are bevelled inward
and that in preparation for the welding, I have spaced them apart from the
main section with a hack saw blade. |
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| Having the bevels and extra space in between the two pieces allowed
for running two layers of weld with the MIG welder. Having the two layers
increases the likelyhood that these will work as air tanks. The grinder
was used after this step, rounding all of the corners and smoothing the
welds down to the rest of the surface. |
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| Here I added a 1.5" x 1" x 1/8" section of tubing to the side of the
main section. This served mainly as spacer to bring the rocker protection
out a bit past the door and body panels. A secondary benefit was to
transition thicknesses of the steel for welding purposes. Welding the 1/4"
steel directly to the Cherokee's sheetmetal is very tricky. |
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| This picture give you an idea of tradeoff in size and weight. On the
left is the original piece of sheetmetal that was cut away. On the right
is the complete rocker replacement section before installation. |
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It was now time for a test fit. Using the floor jack and two C clamps,
it was possible to see where I needed to do a bit more grinding on the
sheetmetal to get everything working together.
This combination was also used until there were enough welds to hold
the rocker replacement in place. |
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| These two pictures show the top welds, holding the rocker to the body
and door sill. It was very difficult to get the right combination of heat
to connect the 1/4" steel to the sheetmetal. |
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| It seemed to work best to run a first pass that was at a setting where
the sheetmetal would not burn away too easily. The second pass was at a
higher setting that would penetrate in the 1/4 better and reheat the
original weld at the same time. |
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| Here I'm pounding the edge of the pinch seam tight up against the
rocker replacement before welding. Thanks to Sean Burrows for taking my
picture.... Notice that I'm wearing my ear protection.... Wailing away on
your Jeep with a sledge hammer can not only be fun, it can be loud! The
welds on this side of this side of the rocker were difficult to say the
least. Gravity definitely has a way of working against you as you are
showered with hot sparks instead of laying down the bead you want. The
rosette welds really were the most successful. |
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| This is a view from the front drivers wheel. |
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| This is a view from the rear drivers' wheel. |
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| This is the painted drivers' side. |
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| This is the painted passenger side. |
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On my first offroad adventure after this modification, I managed to
come down pretty hard on the passenger side rocker. Not much more than a
surface scratch on the metal was the result.
I also entertained some of my fellow MADXJers at camp by taking the
Hi-Lift jack and jacking up until both drivers' side wheels were off the
ground.
This project completed the 1/4" steel perimeter protection on my
Cherokee. With these and my matching custom bumpers, I can take the
Hi-Lift jack to any part of the the perimeter except for the wheel
openings.
Thanks to Bill Ansel, Jeff Ayers and Thomas Hawranek for sharing ideas,
photos and techniques that were used in my project. |
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© Copyright 2000 Scott Rozman
All Rights
reserved.
Photos: Scott Rozman |