FSJ 16 ga. Steel Flat Fender Flares

[THERMOQUAD]

Sorry, I have been out of the loop on posting updates on this project. I work for an essential company and have not missed a single day of work through all of this Corona Virus stuff. In fact, we have seen an increase in business that has kept me hopping.
I built the first set of flares by fitting them directly to the fenders on my '77 Cherokee "S" W/T. I am currently in the process of rebuilding and beefing up this 2 door wagon and can not continue to use it for fender flare production so I designed jigs that duplicate both front and rear fender wells that I can use over and over to mass produce sets of fender flares, both right and left sides.
As I begin to work up the first sets of flares off of these jigs I will fit them to my jeep to be sure they are accurate and make any adjustments needed for quality and accuracy of fitment. My '77 Cherokee "S" W/T has never been wrecked so the fenders and fender wells are as correct as you can get in a 43 year old rig with only 85,000 miles on it.
One thing that anybody interested in these flares has to understand, is that you have to cut the old flares out and rebuild your rear fender wells with at least 18 gauge sheet steel for these flares to fit smooth and clean. You can't do a hack job and then haphazardly slap some sheet steel in to cover the holes you make. What you rebuild is the foundation for these flares to bolt to and they will be as level, strait and strong as the foundation that you create for them.
I will do my best to keep updates posted as I get moved into a shop and begin to work up some new sets.
Stay safe and Jeep On !!!

[emillika]

Tease! lol.. where is the order form!?!?

[Dunk]

They look really nice, would they fit a 1977 J10 or are the wheel wells different?

[THERMOQUAD]

I have not had the opportunity to fit these flares to a J10 or J20 truck. If I am not mistaken the front end, from the doors forward, are the same as a J series Cherokee, but the rear fender wells are slightly different.
I saw some pics some time back of a guy doing a rear flare swap from a J10 to a W/T Cherokee and if I remember right he had to do some custom mods to get them to fit correctly. Maybe some time in the future I will have a chance to try and fit them to a J10 or 20, but for now I would say they most likely would not fit the rear wells correctly. Thanks for the interest.

[threepiece]

The J truck and wide Cherokee share the same rear flair, in fact they all were made with the same tool. The flair for the truck is also the wheelhouse, it is one piece of sheet metal. Jeep simply cut off the wheelhouse portion in a trimming operation and used the remaining flair for the model 17 Widetrack Cherokee. They then created a new wheelhouse outer to connect to the flair. A clever design change that needed only one new tool to be made for the wheelhouse outer and two trimming operations, one for the truck flair and one for the quarter panel.

[THERMOQUAD]

Well ok that sounds good, but if you go to the FSJN Build Threads Forum and go to page 6, 1977 Cherokee build by "csuengr", down close to the bottom of page 1 you will see how he had to modify a J truck flare to get it to fit his '77 Cherokee on the rear wheel well. Looks like he had to shorten the back side by 1" to maybe 2" and make a couple of relief cuts to flex it in to match the curve of the body.
That would tell me that J truck and Cherokee Flares are not Identical on the rear wheel wells.

[THERMOQUAD]

Key pics from that thread !!!

J Truck Flare 1.jpg

J Truck Flare 2.jpg

[threepiece]

Well ok that sounds good, but if you go to the FSJN Build Threads Forum and go to page 6, 1977 Cherokee build by "csuengr", down close to the bottom of page 1 you will see how he had to modify a J truck flare to get it to fit his '77 Cherokee on the rear wheel well. Looks like he had to shorten the back side by 1" to maybe 2" and make a couple of relief cuts to flex it in to match the curve of the body.
That would tell me that J truck and Cherokee Flares are not Identical on the rear wheel wells.

I have added J truck flairs to a 1979 Cherokee and I found they fit perfectly. I did not need to modify anything. If you notice in the pictures of the thread in your post the lower portion of the quarter panel was replaced, perhaps it was not installed correctly.

I did notice when doing my swap that there is a slight difference between the right and left sides.

[threepiece]

I took a second look at the pictures in the thread from csuengr, I believe he was trying to fit the flair using the J truck spot weld locations. This won’t work because the Cherokee panel is shorter and shaped differently than the truck at the lower rear. What he should have done is leave the flair located as it was in the first picture and simply patched the spot weld holes. His flair is now curved inward at the bottom, it looks much better in the first picture.

[threepiece]

I also took a look at a few wide tracks and truck beds I have here. I noticed the flair is positioned about 3/8” farther outboard from the body side on the J truck bed. If csuenger used the J truck spot welds to locate the flair on the Cherokee as I suspect he did, this would have added to the misalignment issue he had.

I don’t recall the details of the flair swap I did as it occurred 24 years ago. I can say that based on my recent investigation that many if not all of the J truck spotweld locations are not the same when the flair is used on the Cherokee.

[THERMOQUAD]

This is one of the main reasons why I developed the flat fender flares for WT Cherokees. If you want real steel flares for your rig your choices are VERY limited and the fact that they are infinitely adjustable horizontally and offer far better tire clearance than stock flares is a big bonus.

[TexasFSJ]

Count me in.

[jimcogdill]

Thanks for the positive interest and input, Steel flares for our FSJ's are long overdo. I am getting things pulled together and I will post when I start production.

I need a set of rear flares

[MadMax78]

Any updates on these? I’m in need of a set.

[THERMOQUAD]

Thanks for the interest in my work, unfortunately I have not been able to start producing any sets due to a lack of funds and no shop to work in.
I stood in the mud and the cold wind to build the set that you see in these pics and to this day this is the only set that exists.
I hope to get in gear on this project some time this year, but at this time I can't say when that will be. I will update when I can get things to break loose an start moving.

[threepiece]

I stood in the mud and the cold wind to build the set that you see in these pics

You sir, are my kind of people.

[THERMOQUAD]

Thanks threepiece, most people don't want to be my kind of people, but I always welcome a a brother who's willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

[rocklaurence]

True. However, more and more of our culture are being taught that we have a Right to Equity. Not equal opportunity but equal results. An Equal standard of living, income, education as everyone else. Effort is not important - Only that we all have the same amount. The person that doesnt Weather the Cold, work extra hours, sacrifice to achieve the goal should benefit equally from those other Exceptional persons efforts.

[THERMOQUAD]

Rock, you sure got that right, I see it more and more every day. Anybody that thinks that our country should continue moving in that direction needs to go ask the citizens of China, Russia, Cuba ...... how that way of teaching has worked for them.
That being said, we should probably get this thread back on track to "Fender Flares" and I promise that when I finally get production rolling I will equally charge the same price to each buyer, rich or poor, hard worker or spinless blood sucking leach. LOL

[j10builder]

That's some mighty fine metal work. The forethought really paid off.