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No-Drawback Jeep Wrangler Roll CageRollover Readiness From the October, 2011 issue of Jp By Christian Hazel
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You never plan on rolling your Jeep, but it does happen. Most factory roll cages in ’76-newer CJs and Wranglers are okay. But when your safety is on the line, okay doesn’t always cut the mustard. We had been planning on replacing the factory cage in our ’89 Wrangler for some time. Ours had the fastback-style rear downtubes and lap belts that didn’t offer much peace of mind when the author had his young children in it. In 1992 the factory did away with the fastback rear cage design of the ’76-’91 CJs and Wranglers and added three-point seatbelts and an inverted L-shaped rear bar that extended over rear passengers’ heads. It was a better design, but even though the rear passengers were better protected, the CJs used only the rear four-point rollbar and Wrangler cages tie a pair of front runners only to the windshield. There are no downtubes to the floor. In the event of a rollover, the windshield glass smashes and the windshield frame distorts, increasing the possibility of head injury to the front occupants. Adding downbars to the front runners of the Wrangler cage is a quick way to bolster safety, but most home-built and aftermarket options limit foot room up front and can interfere with the E-brake pedal and release. So to make a long intro short, we had been eyeballing aftermarket cage options for our Wrangler when GenRight Off Road introduced its new Full Cage Kit for CJ-7s, YJs, and TJs. We liked a lot of elements offered in the GenRight cage kit, but most-specifically we dug the front laser-cut stanchions that don’t impede front foot room or interfere with the E-brake function. The 3⁄16-inch stanchions hug the side of the tub and bolt to the lower door hinge, increasing tub strength and stiffness. The tubes are all 1¾-inch, 0.120-wall DOM cut and coped for assembly. Furthermore, you can add options to the Full Cage Kit like extra grab handles, X-braces, windshield V-bars, and more. But best of all for us is the fact that the cage greatly increases protection for rear occupants and includes weld-in bungs for use with three-point shoulder belts. We went with the standard Full Cage Kit, which can be shipped to your door in three boxes. Once it arrived, we gutted our Wrangler’s interior, installed the 3⁄16-inch floor plates and stanchions, and burned it all together with our Lincoln Electric Power Mig Dual welder. Now we have full protection for our front passengers and don’t have to suffer that look from the wife when we load up the kids in the back.  You don’t really need to gut...  You don’t really need to gut your Jeep’s interior, but it will prevent weld spatter from damaging your seats and the nylon webbing of your seatbelts. Plus, it makes working in and around the tub that much easier. The GenRight cage comes with most of the hardware you’ll need, including new Grade 8 bolts for the floor plates and longer bolts for the lower door hinges. The only things we reused were the stanchion-to-windshield frame bolts.  The GenRight cage is primarily...  The GenRight cage is primarily 1¾-inch, 0.120-wall DOM. The only tubes not this size are the 1½-inch, 0.120-wall dash bar and main hoop gussets, and the 1-inch, 0.120-wall grab handles. Silver paint pen is used to label the tubes, so be careful not to wipe it off. By the time you read this most of the tubes should have the numbers laser-etched on them, but if not note the tube part numbers to keep your sanity during assembly.  The front stanchions are a...  The front stanchions are a two-piece design. The upper portion bolts to the dash, while the lower ties into the side of the tub. Don’t weld the floor plates until the rest of the cage is built in case you need to move the stanchions up or down slightly during the cage assembly. The rear B- and C-pillar floor plates utilize the stock mounting bungs. The only drilling you need to do on the Jeep tub is for the four front floor plate mounting holes.  Because of manufacturing variances...  Because of manufacturing variances and general wear and tear, virtually no Jeep tub is perfectly square. Body bushings settle, things get tweaked, and so on. GenRight warns some trimming and grinding may be necessary to get a perfect fit. In our case, we had to use a die grinder to open three of the upper stanchion mounting holes, but the rest of the cage went together with perfect gaps, requiring no grinding or trimming.  The tubing comes lightly oiled...  The tubing comes lightly oiled to prevent flash-rusting during storage and shipping. Clean any surfaces to be welded with chlorine-free brake cleaner and a lint-free rag and wire brush. Most of our tubing was laser-cut with clean ends, but a couple had been mechanically notched. We cleaned up any burrs with a half-round file. Cleaning each tube end inside and out before beginning will make the assembly flow more smoothly and help ensure clean, strong welds.  To avoid costly truck shipping,...  To avoid costly truck shipping, the main side tubes that run from the stanchions to the rear down plates are broken down into two pieces and joined with a 4-inch section of 1½-inch, 0.120-wall tubing. Before sleeving the tubes together, we drilled a couple holes in the correct ends for plug welds to help increase the strength of the joint. We assembled the bars together for trial fitment, but left them unwelded during mock-up so we could rotate and reposition them as needed.  GenRight’s directions say...  GenRight’s directions say to first position and tack the B-pillars that go behind the front seats, however we began by placing the assembled side tubes onto the A-pillar stanchion and C-pillar rear plate mounts. We used bungees attached to the ceiling to hold them upright. This allowed us to eyeball the correct positioning for the B-pillars, which are the keystone for the whole cage build. It’s pretty important that you get them tacked in the correct position. Once the B-pillars are in place, the rest goes together pretty easily.  Once we got our B-pillars...  Once we got our B-pillars where we wanted them we ran a short 2-inch pass just to hold them solidly in place. During the cage construction you’ll do a fair amount of pulling and pushing on things. Considering the weight and leverage imparted on these mounts by the rest of the cage, the short beads will hold the B-pillars in place better than a couple of little tack welds.  Before tacking anything else,...  Before tacking anything else, a couple ratchet straps cinched the cross bars in place to check the overall fitment and position of the tubes at the A-pillar stanchion and C-pillar floor mounts. We installed the center crossbar in line with the B-pillar tubes so they looked like one single unit. Then, the front spreaders were used to find the correct position for the forward crossbar. Since the front of the cage angles inward (like a ship’s bow) the position of the front cross bar affects the distance of the A-pillar mounts at the stanchions, so this is a crucial step.  With the A-pillar stanchion...  With the A-pillar stanchion and rear C-pillar floor mounts tacked, we used more ratchet straps and clamps to assemble the rest of the cage “dry.” This allowed us to reposition the tubes as needed to square up the cage and ensure proper gaps and alignment. Once we were happy with everything we made two tack welds on each tube to hold them in place.  Before removing our factory...  Before removing our factory cage, we had measured the height on the seatbelt mounting points. We marked the new GenRight tube at the same height from the tub floor and drilled for the GenRight-supplied bungs, incrementally working up to a 5⁄8-inch drill bit. For the rear seatbelt mounting location, Trasborg provided us a measurement from his girlfriend’s LJ, which was 20-inches perpendicular to the top of the wheelwell.  Before tack-welding these...  Before tack-welding these gussets in place, we fully welded the joints beneath them while we had easy access with our MIG nozzle. Try to plan ahead and make life easy on yourself. If you don’t plan on pulling the cage for final welding, you may also want to paint the stanchions and floor plates and even portions of the tubes that aren’t accessible once it’s in the vehicle. Don’t forget to mask off any parts that will need to be welded on.  After fully welding the cage,...  After fully welding the cage, we used some high-quality self-etching primer and black chassis paint from our local auto parts store. Then we bribed a buddy to help us lift the cage back into the vehicle and bolted the two stanchion halves back together. Only then did we weld on the stanchion floor plates and drill holes for the mounting bolts. GenRight offers a kit to tie the cage directly to the frame, but our 1⁄4-inch-thick aluminum rockers were in the way. Instead, we drilled through our rockers and used Grade 5 button-head 3⁄8-inch bolts for a smoother underside.  The finished product not only...  The finished product not only improves protection, but looks great as well. We didn’t use the included grab handles for now, but we may add them later. We also didn’t weld on the brackets that bolt the top of the windshield to the cage since we plan on running with the windshield down and really like the cleaner look without them.
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