Fullsize Slide

If you're the fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on how you look at it) owner of a fullsized Jeep, you've probably found out by now that there isn't a wealth of aftermarket products available to make your Jeep more trail-ready. Other, more popular Jeep models enjoy numerous bolt-on options. Welcome to the shop where almost anything is available for your FSJ, it's called Build It Yourself, and its neighboring shop, Pay To Have It Built. We wanted some strong rocker guards for our 1973 J-truck. We had built rockers for our 4,500-pound 1966 Panel Wagon that worked out real well. For the 6,000-pound J-2000 we simply made a longer set and added two extra frame attachment points. Here are some ideas for building your own FSJ skidders.

We prefer round tubing. Square stuff just looks hack and heavy. We started with 1 3/4-inch .120-wall DOM for the main rocker rails. DOM is stronger and less likely to crush than hot rolled electric welded (HREW) seam tubing. It's also lighter than 1/4-inch-thick square tube or nasty schedule 40-poop pipe. Because DOM has a higher carbon content than these other materials, it slides over rocks better as well. Stardom and Sharon both offer strong and clean DOM tubing. Our local supplier carries Sharon.	We cleaned the body paint from the areas to be welded. Then, with a floor jack holding the tube in place, we stitch-welded it to the bottom of the body near the pinch welds. This will reinforce the area and keep rocks from crushing the doorframes.	Using a tubing bender, we bent up these 1 1/2-inch .120-wall protective hoops and added three short hoop supports to each side. Finish-weld the hoops first, then cut, cope and pop in all of the hoop supports before tack welding them in place.
J-Truck	With everything all welded up, we shot them with olive drab to match the truck's paint. Our new rockers look slick, clean and unobtrusive from the topside and trick, durable and functional from underneath.

Panel Wagon
The abused shorter rockers on our Panel Wagon only have two 1 1/2-inch .120-wall runners that are attached directly to the rollcage mounts. The rockers have held up amazingly well to full-throttle rocky ledge attacks. The longer rockers on our J-truck are attached to the frame with four tubes mounted up and out of the way. For space reasons we used two 1 1/2-inch .120-wall tubes up front and two 1 3/4-inch .120-wall tubes just below the bed. The main rocker rails on the truck are not welded to the bed, only to the cab. This allows the bed and cab to flex independently. These rockers rigidly attach the frame to the body. The thin body mounts on early FSJs don't allow much noise absorption or movement anyway.