Thank you so much for taking the time to outline this! I seem to have a third plastic fin in the middle of the 2 fins you've shown, offset up and a bit behind away from the tire (maybe the Overland fender is different). Will try to work through it, thanks again!RokBlok MudFlaps (Part 2)
Okay, I just pulled my front passenger mud flap off and took some pictures in the hopes it could help answer your question.
Looking back from the front tire, the mud flap is held on my three bolts, two on the top and one off to the side.
But when you take the mud flap off, only the top two holes have screw thread clips on them.
The third, lower screw thread clip fits onto the truck itself
When you look forwards, towards the tire, at where the top two screw go, you sure could be fooled into thinking that the mud flap goes BETWEEN those two layers of plastic. You'd be wrong, unless you're planning to drill out the holes in those two fins of plastic and make them bigger
Instead, install the mud flap behind both layers of plastic. Here's the same view, looking forwards towards the wheel, with the mud flap installed
Then screw in the lower, rear thumbscrew
All the while, making sure that the top wing of the mud flap is on the other side, inside the wheel well, separate from the rest of the mudflaps.
If any of that helps, awesome. Otherwise, sorry, it's what I got, and as you can see, it's all based off a Rubicon fender flare. Best of luck!
so many great ideas! I'm assuming you used the 40amp switch for the winch relay? Any concerns that 40amps is not enough?Front Bumper and Winch
I stuck with the generic plastic Jeep front bumper when I bought my JT. Why? Because he cost of upgrading to a metal one PLUS the cost of a winch plate was going to be the same cost as a non-Jeep-brand front bumper that included a winch plate.
I went with Rugged Ridge's new Venator Front Bumper ($720 on sale + tax). It's basically a winch plate with a top cover and a skid plate attachment, and it uses the fog lights from the standard Jeep plastic bumper.
My biggest concern was for my winch. The sun here in Las Vegas is absolutely brutal, and it destroys most products faster than their manufacturers ever imagined. If I was going to get synthetic line, I wasn't going to trust it to pull the weight of my Jeep if it had been out in the sun for 3-4 years. I wanted something that hid the line of the winch from the sun.
The first step is to remove the plastic bumper.
Next you bolt in the winch plate.
Next bolt on the front tow hooks.
Time for winch install! This is a PIA, because you have to also now run the wires for your winch the way you're going to want them. Don't make the mistake I did and have to remove the winch 2-3 times to adjust wire placement!
Next the skid plate (the directions were NOT clear on this one, it took me a few tries to figure out how it bolted on the frame of the truck)
And then the top cover, then snap in the fog lights you held onto from your original bumper.
I used a Warn VR EVO 10-S winch from River City Offroad's Black Friday Sale for $633. I think the EVO is the sweet spot on Warn's product line. Zeon is too darned expensive.
Here you can see how well hidden the winch line is from the sun in this bumper:
I wanted to wire the winch to one of the Accessory switches, and I didn't want power running to the winch at all times. Big long runs of high power that you're not using always seem like a bad idea to me. I got the Warn Power Interrupt Kit. This is a high power relay that you install close to the vehicle's battery. When you press your Accessory Switch, the accessory switch merely turns this relay on or off. The Relay controls whether there is power going to the winch. That way, when I'm not using the winch there's not a live power line running all the way to my bumper, asking for trouble.
The downside is that I couldn't come up with a good place to mount the Relay. I still haven't. For now, I grabbed a piece of metal flashing, wrapped it in electrical tape, mounted the relay to it, and bolted it next to the battery. It'll do for now.
Here it is, next to the regulator for my on-board air setup (to be discussed later):
Nevada requires a front license plate, so I also picked up a Flipster V2 Winch License Plate System ($84 on sale) from Cascadia 4x4.
I finished it all off with a Factor 55 FlatLink E Shackle ($160) for the end of the winch line and a Factor 55 FlatLink Rope Guard ($39) to cover the side of it.
Installation Note - To install the Factor 55 FlatLink Rope Guard, I HIGHLY recommend you purchase a pin punch. I got this one from Amazon.
Add a set of cheap blue Bow Shackles off Amazon, and the bumper is done!
Actually, I'm not. The beauty of using a relay (solenoid) is that it requires VERY low power to operate. The Jeep's Auxiliary switch is only switching the relay on and off. That's nothing. It's the relay itself that's connecting or disconnecting the winch from the battery. The wire Warn gives you to hook your switch to the interrupt kit is only 18ga. It comes with an inline 5 amp fuse. 15 amp is 3x more than it needs, so the inline will blow long before the switch fuse ever will.so many great ideas! I'm assuming you used the 40amp switch for the winch relay? Any concerns that 40amps is not enough?
Just my 2c, but if I were you I wouldn't bother with the ESS. You're talking about a LOT more wiring and fiddling inside your Jeep's engine compartment versus just ignoring the ESS and wiring your new stuff straight to your alternator. I think:so my thought was just to increase gauge of the wire that normally goes to the ESS and swap in one or a pair of 100aH gel batteries. I get a healthy discount on lithium but since I want to involve the alternator, this seams like the best fit. The ESS battery itself I’d probably just sell for $25 to a local jeeper. I don’t want to do much if any wiring under the hood so it seems simple in my mind that this might work in conjunction with an MPPT in bed.
I hope that makes sense. I understand solar tech but I’ve never done vehicle integration, so I’m perhaps being over precautious. I’d like to run a single plate induction plus fridge. Plus lights plus twin arb compressor and keep all of that stuff confined to the bed.
Not at all; awesome thread!Hopefully ya'll didn't mind me going slightly off-Jeep-topic for a couple posts.