Rear TJ Flares - ON A XJ CHEROKEE? - AUSJEEPOFFROAD.COM Jeep News Australia and New Zealand

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Old 25-11-2003
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Default Rear TJ Flares - ON A XJ CHEROKEE?



Want some more room for your wheels? Want to change the offset of your rims? Need to keep it legal? Well this is for you then!

After all the suspension work was done on the Cherokee it was time to make sure those 33" x 12.5" tyres would keep within legal guidelines. Here in Australia each state has different laws regarding suspension lifts but one thing they do all share is that tyres must be inside the guards. With this in mind there were a few options on the cards. One was to add flexie flares onto the existing OEM flares but the problem there was that I needed more room in the wheel arches for the tyres so that idea was scraped. Bushwacker flares, option two, now this ones a good idea, opens up the wheel arch, downfall? Well as long as you don't mind your truck looking like a SLR5000 and have plenty of dollars to spend go ahead with them.

For my money and time I wanted a factory look. Lots of the guys in the states have been fitting TJ flares for years. Most of what was seen was using all four TJ flares but recently people have been using four rear TJ flares, This gives it a more factory look as the front TJ flares won't match up to the Cherokee guard with ease.

FRONT FLARES

With four rear TJ flares sourced it was time to work out my plan. Telling nessiii that it would only take me about 2 hrs to do the work on the front I had some time to play on the truck. Now as we all know, JEEP time doesn't equal real time. Total time taken, approx 6 hrs including walking away in confusion and trying to re-evaluate the situation.

Now whats needed to do this project. A hell of a lot of guts, a jig saw with various metal cutting blades, a angle grinder, 8mm bolts and washer, ball penne hammer, flat nose pliers, vice grips, sockets, metal primer and black paint.

The first thing you need to do is remove the factory flare. Once you have done this you will find the OEM mounting plate still exists. This needs to be removed, some of the bolts holding this on were a real pain to get off and some actually broke. This section of the job took quite a bit of time. Also remove all the OEM splash guard under the wheel arch. With this off you can see in Fig 1 where I cut. Now leave about 5mm of sheet metal just after the seam so that you keep some structural integrity. Once the flare goes on it is quite sturdy.

Cut small amounts off at a time and measure up against the flare if your not comfortable. The TJ flare has small lugs on the back which need to be removed, easiest way to do this is with a angle grinder straight onto the plastic. Now put your flare up against the vehicle and scribe an arch on the plastic where the backing plate needs to be cut. Quite a bit of this needs to be removed so that the wheel opening is as large as possible.

As you will see in Fig 2 this section caused me some concern. To work it out I used some cardboard and made a template and transfered that onto the flare. You will find the amount of plastic needed to be removed in this section will not allow you to have a mounting point for the flare from the door bumper stip down. To overcome this a bracket made from sheet metal was used and a bolt was put through the flare on the bottom back edge.

Don't install the first flare until you have used it as a template to cut the second flare. To bolt them on I used 8mm bolts spaced evenly around the flare on the underside. Make sure you prime all the cut metal and bolt holes finishing off with some black paint over the whole lot.

As you can see from Fig 4 the main lip on the outside edge of the flare has also been trimmed escessively to open up the wheel area more.

Fig 1 Fig 2

REAR FLARES

This is a bit more complicted. Theories that have been seen elsewhere have you separate the inner and outer skins and reweld with a tig welder. One thing I didn't like about this was the fact I don't have a tig. Solve... don't cut the two seams apart. By doing this you will save yourself a lot of time, cost and un-necessary problems. The one problem with not separating the seams is that you won't get the wheel opening open as much as you would like.

This said with some home panel beating (enter ball pene hammer) you will be able to bend it all back out of the way see Fig 5. Follow the same steps as the front, the only major differance is that you will not be able to bolt this flare on as you have no way of getting the bolt in. For this I used self tapping screws with washers to hold it all on. Also the outter edge of the flare has been timmed considerably not shown in pictures.

Fig 3 Fig 4

With the OEM rear bumper corner trimmed and refitted the finished look is quite neat and factory looking see Fig 6.

Hoping this helps anyone wanting to fit TJ flares to a XJ Cherokee. For further information please email me.

Fig 6
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Old 26-11-2003
Bogged  Bogged is offline
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Hey jimmy.. there's no Fig 5!
  #3  
Old 26-11-2003
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yeah think i need to fix that hey
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