I Drilled 58 Holes In My Truck Body ?

[Mad Mac]

After the first hole is drilled at one end
and the second hole is drilled at the other end
doesn't the armor serve as a template to drill all the other holes?

Anyway, I thought the purpose of those armor plates
was just to cover all the rust holes you get up north.

Image courtesy Bob Christensen

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[JTenn]

@JTenn, this mod looks great. I agree with you about drilling that 1st hole, again great job.

Thank you!! I appreciate that

 

[BajaTym]

I grew up with my father doing 100% of the work on our house and cars. I inherited that same mentality. It’s partly being cheap, it’s partly not trusting people ... we’re a few generations away from the humans in Wall-E.

My goodness, that's a lot to digest! Great reply. ?

There're many paths to self-reliance. For me, my father was killed in a car crash when I was 3, so I learned how to repair things out of financial necessity. Since my mother spent a lot of her time 'self medicated' to cope with her troubles, we spend my entire childhood on a combo of welfare and SSI. Apposed to what many ill-informed people think, this is not a road to financial success. Anyway, we were beyond poor. We spend large amounts of time either homeless, living in cars, or staying with my mother's friends. All that said to paint a picture of not being able to afford proper repairs.

As I grew older I started noticing how most everything in my house was crap (broken, damaged, or just junk). In Jr High I really started to notice that my mother couldn't fix anything. I watched, time after time, as she took her POS car to the shop, and they usually ripped her off.

In general, I learned not to trust most people, particularly dudes. So when my mother took her car in for an oil change, I'd watch them. I'll never forget the first time I noticed them scamming her. The tech pulled her car into the bay, stood around for 20 mins, and pulled it back out, and claimed to have changed the oil. Well, they didn't. They ripped her off. I saw this type of stuff happen all the time.

I'd always been 'handy' around the house, and never really afraid to try to fix stuff. It just comes very natural to me. Eventually my mother let me start changing the oil. I had no real understanding of what everything did, so I walked down to Chief's Auto Parts, read through the Haynes manual, put it back on the shelf, and purchased the oil/ filter. I then walked back home and changed the oil. Easy as cake. I was shocked at just how easy it was. That started me thinking, "if these tools can do the job, I can do it to...and better!".

Thankfully, all the men in my family (father's side) have been mechanically inclined. So even without him around, I gravitated towards mechanics and engineering.

Anyway, as it sits now, I'm well off. I'm not wealthy, but I'm comfortable. I still do just about everything for myself, with few exceptions. It all comes down to seeing a lot of poor quality craftsmanship, lack of pride in one's work, and labor being understandably expensive.

In the end, not everyone has what it takes. The world is a big place, there's always room for one more beta (fe)male ??? ... jokes, jokes.

 

[Orange01z28]

I've never understood this armor. How does drilling 58 holes into the body prevent further damage? Is the armor that much thicker that it will prevent the body from folding under it?

There's zero hope of returning back to stock either

 

[Boxr4]

I got 'doored' in a parking lot in this area. 1000$ paint and body work quoted to sort of fix it... or I was going to go this way... but with the 'stick on' variety. If I anticipated trail need for this I'd go your hardbolted way...I do not thought.

 

[Wheelin98TJ]

I've never understood this armor. How does drilling 58 holes into the body prevent further damage? Is the armor that much thicker that it will prevent the body from folding under it?

There's zero hope of returning back to stock either

It's tub protection without loosing ground clearance like you do with frame mounted sliders. Guys that play in the rocks have been using tub mounted sliders for a long time.

 

[Orange01z28]

It's tub protection without loosing ground clearance like you do with frame mounted sliders. Guys that play in the rocks have been using tub mounted sliders for a long time.

I guess it's understandable but i'd rather trade the 1/2" loss of ground clearance for the added strength of a real slider

 

[Wheelin98TJ]

I guess it's understandable but i'd rather trade the 1/2" loss of ground clearance for the added strength of a real slider

If you were wheeling in Johnson Valley, you'd want tub mounted. It just depends where you wheel and how you use your Jeep.

 

[porsharman]

I grew up with my father doing 100% of the work on our house and cars. I inherited that same mentality. It’s partly being cheap, it’s partly not trusting people and it’s partly legitimately enjoying the work. Occasionally I encounter something I can’t or won’t do or don’t have the equipment for, e.g., slate roofing work, vehicle alignment, etc., but there’s not much even though I can now afford to pay people. Having operated this way my whole life what blows my mind isn’t that people don’t do all or most of this kind of work themselves. Peoples lack of intellectual curiosity for this realm of knowledge is still odd to me. People have all sorts of different backgrounds and it usually takes a parent to hand down both the skills and mentality towards DIY, which is unfortunate, considering people don’t operate that way when it comes to going to school for something. Most people don’t grow up practicing law either.

It seems to take a certain kind of person to go out and try and tackle something they haven’t done before on their own, outside of a formal, structured setting. For a lot of people that concept is totally foreign. It takes an entirely different kind of person to not only do that but to first actually research and learn how to do it correctly. Some people, maybe a large portion of DIYers have the mentality, or maybe ego, to do things themselves but not to try and educate themselves first to do it correctly. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to parse who is the autodidact with good mechanical skills and who’s the idiot or nutcase especially on the internet. I’ve probably encountered more DIYers that were dangerous idiots (Dunning-Kruger people), than folks that knew their limits and took the time to legitimately expand them. So there’s 2 qualities at play. Willingness to do it yourself and the discipline, intellect and humility to learn before you leap.

Anyway, what does blow my mind is how people, especially not so wealthy folks, afford or justify the insane prices associated with paying someone to do work for them. I get it if you’re rich, because time is money. I’d rather sit by the pool and let someone else do all the work if I was that wealthy aside from the things I legitimately enjoy doing. But middle-class and poor people pay huge sums for simple stuff to be done for them. I somewhat understand the car thing if you don’t have the space or invest in tools or you live in an apartment. But, I still cannot wrap my mind around how anyone who isn’t a multimillionaire with really odd finances, pays someone to do their taxes. Professional tax preparation uses essentially the same software anyone else can use for free. Even sole proprietorship business deductions with accelerated depreciation isn’t rocket science. People are paying H&R Block $350 to do 5 minutes of work to file a 1040EZ. They’re being ripped off. I’ve been doing my own taxes since I was a teenager. There’s no secret to it. The government literally provides instructions. Housework is the same way. Sewing isn’t hard, but a lot of people don’t even know how to fold laundry. Cooking too. It’s crazy how easy it is to make your own condiments, bread (with a machine), etc. You know what’s in it and you save a lot of money. My ex wife couldn’t boil water. I have no idea how she survived on her own.

The other thing that I see is that for a multitude of reasons, the professionals are becoming less so. It’s getting harder to find people to do a lot of the kind of work people don’t do themselves. Try finding a carpenter that actually knows how to hang a door, rather than nail gun in a pre-hung one. This is in part because people like my father are a dying breed (literally). People don’t grow up working on cars with their dad anymore. People don’t learn basic food chemistry, like the difference between baking soda and baking powder and when to use which one, or how to make a soup base, or season things properly. Those people who never did these things with their parents grow up and some of them become mechanics and they’re not as skilled as they otherwise would be. It doesn’t help that we treat vocational education as some kind of lesser track for lower castes. My dumb ass went to college actually thinking naïvely that people went to college to expand their intellect. College is supposed to be vocational training too. It’s just frequently not very good vocational training while simultaneously being less about well rounded educated citizens with a good grasp of wide ranging subjects. So called good schools today are producing CS graduates who can’t code and have basically zero liberal arts knowledge to boot. But this is the track for the supposedly “smart” kids while trades education is all but forgotten.

I worked around people mostly my age and younger building nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers. I wouldn’t allow 75% of those “mechanics” as they’re called, to touch my lawn mower, but they’re building some of the most complex systems in existence, and badly, requiring constant rework. They call it the “green labor crisis” There’s also a growing crisis in medicine where medical schools are having a harder time finding people with adequate hand-eye coordination to be surgeons because, in part, few people grow up anymore doing work with their hands. Paradoxically, the need to do things yourself is probably increasing because actual skilled professionals are becoming increasingly rare and they end up butchering your stuff. Software engineering requires the ability to troubleshoot abstract multi-dimensional problems. You learn these skills when you work on things as a child. You learn these skills working on cars. You don’t really learn this in school. It’s almost impossible in my experience to find developers that can adequately debug or test their own code, let alone someone else’s. It’s part of the increasing inshitification of software and the internet. IT people suffer from the same problem.

A more relevant, to this forum anyway, case in point; it’s been my experience and that of other members here, that Stellantis technicians can’t seem to be able to change the f@&$ing oil on an Ecodiesel without cocking it up, making a massive mess and leaving you stranded on the side of the road with a truck throwing codes. It’s dead simple. Put a rag under the oil filter to catch drippings and properly tighten the filter. Hasn’t this always true for an oil change? 25NM is barely wrench tight. I haven’t had a single properly done Jeep Wave oil change. I’m glad I’m doing them myself now. I’m here to say that this truck/engine combo is the single easiest most drama-free (except for the price of parts) oil change I’ve ever done; no stupid strap wrenches crushing the old filter; no having to reach half way to hell to get to the filter; no oddball size oil pan plugs; a little cup to catch the oil from the old filter that you can wipe out. But the techs can’t do it without coating the truck in what seems like a quart of oil and can’t seem to tighten the filter properly. Again, 25NM (19.43 ft-lbs) is almost hand tight. The trajectory of all of these trends is alarming. With “AI”, which IMHO might be the biggest joke/scam yet (and I used write code for autonomous systems) we’re a few generations away from the humans in Wall-E.

Very well said Sir……. I have only had an alignment after I installed my Mopar lift kit into my ‘21 JTRD. I have not utilized my Jeep Wave stuff either. The only thing I will use the dealership for is the HPFP recall and I am dreading that. All my mods from winches, power steps, on board air, brakes, chromoly axle shafts, etc have been done by myself. My JTRD has 70k on the odometer and going strong. Here’s to the DIYers wherever you are?.

 

[JTenn]

I guess it's understandable but i'd rather trade the 1/2" loss of ground clearance for the added strength of a real slider

I have real sliders too and have absolutely beat the hell out of them. I have bent them bad enough to have to replace them already. I had to remove them to install these armor plates so they're not on in the pictures. Yes they (the armor) are very substantial and will very much protect the rocker panels from rock, root, or log strikes. They are 5mm thick plate steel. You're also correct that I can't undo the installation. That's why it took me almost a year to bring myself to do it. But I figure it this way, this truck is my off road rig and I use it very much for that purpose so why not armor plate as much as I can within reason to protect as much as I can while out on the trail. And I like the way they look so double points. As I stated previously, it's not a mod that everyone would do or want to do and that's cool. That's what makes all of our rigs unique. You'll never see an angry grill or 20 inch wheels with roller skate tires on mine but if that's a thing someone likes then by all means, own it. Here's a video for reference of the type of wheeling I do.

 

[JTenn]

There's zero hope of returning back to stock either

There's zero chance I ever would want too. I have way too much invested to even consider that as an option and that was long before this. I have no plans to ever get rid of this rig so I'm good with it.

 

[MSgt4246]

Hardest mod yet. Not in terms of difficulty but drilling 58 holes in the body of my truck hurt my soul. Ok, not really but I've been sitting on these armor panels for almost a year because I just couldn't bring myself to purposely poke holes in the sides of my truck. I finally worked up the nerve and pulled the trigger. I literally cringed every time I drilled a hole, lol. Now I just need to get the new black armor dirty so it matches everything else. Or wash the truck, yeah, I could do that. Na, mud is more fun.

OK, so that looks amazing and I can totally seeing doing whatever you can to protect your baby. That being said, the whole process just scares the heck out of me. I've heard horror stories of guys drilling into weld points accidentally and then not being able to get the little rivnut threaded inserts to go in thus leaving a big ole hole to contend with. Personally I have had varied success with rivnuts with occasionally some of them not locking in place and then you just have an insert that spins without actually tightening down the bolt that gets screwed into it. Did you encounter any issues? I salute your bravery. LOL

 

[JTenn]

OK, so that looks amazing and I can totally seeing doing whatever you can to protect your baby. That being said, the whole process just scares the heck out of me. I've heard horror stories of guys drilling into weld points accidentally and then not being able to get the little rivnut threaded inserts to go in thus leaving a big ole hole to contend with. Personally I have had varied success with rivnuts with occasionally some of them not locking in place and then you just have an insert that spins without actually tightening down the bolt that gets screwed into it. Did you encounter any issues? I salute your bravery. LOL

Thank you for the compliment. Drilling into a weld seam can go very bad very quickly if you're not expecting it. Most of the time you can do a little investigating and pick out the suspect areas. This installation with the hole location on the Fishbone brand armor did not intersect with any weld seams. However, there's a couple spots where 2 layers of sheet metal with a void between them had to be drilled through. It is critical that the armor be mocked up and in place before the first hole is ever drilled. If that first hole is off so will be the remaining 28 on that side. I used a transfer punch to mark the hole, then drilled a 5/32 pilot hole followed by the 23/64 drill bit. The job wasn't that bad other than the mental aspect of drilling holes in the body. But if you're absolutely certain you want it, then just commit and go for it. I also have a rivnut installation kit which I wouldn't do this job without. Using the little tool that came with the armor would be brutal to say the least.

 

[TXJeepDad]

Mine arrived today. Lol that's a lot of bolts in the hardware.
Bought my JT to crawl, so armor is a must. Super thick, can't wait to beat on them. Hitting Hidden Falls again around mid March for the Texas jeepers ?

Yt: TXJeepDad

 

[JTenn]

Mine arrived today. Lol that's a lot of bolts in the hardware.
Bought my JT to crawl, so armor is a must. Super thick, can't wait to beat on them. Hitting Hidden Falls again around mid March for the Texas jeepers ?

Yt: TXJeepDad

You'll be happy with the completed project. Are you doing the installation or having someone else do it? If you take it on yourself just mock it up perfect before you drill the first hole. Post pics once it's done.

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