TJ to CJ grille swap: Another Jeff Scherb project!

Howdy, chiming in on the excellent work comments. Very nice.
Regarding the other fender choices, I am not fond of flat fenders on CJ's, that being said the option 4 highline looks better than most. Would think it would also offer the most tire clearance, which is why I hope people are doing it.

 

Some people prefer steel parts, thinking that fiberglass parts can't possibly be as strong as their steel equivalents. So for those people here are a few strength test photos...

A spare tire on the hood. No big deal, you could probably set a spare on a factory TJ hood without damaging the hood. Not sure about a CJ hood, they don't have a center reinforcement like the TJ hoods do.



In this next photo I'm lifting the hood by the front corner to test torsional strength. Notice how straight and level the hood is, basically no twisting. A factory hood isn't rigid enough to do this.



But that's not so much weight yet, how about the 6'6" 225-lb. gorilla test?



The gorilla test on the fender:



I would have stood on the hood as well but the ceiling in my workshop isn't tall enough .

BTW all of these parts are lighter in weight than their factory sheet metal equivalents.

I don't recommend you try these tests on your factory sheet metal parts. I wouldn't try this on any of the commercial fiberglass parts on the market either, I've built my parts to handle these weights and stresses.

Back to the first two photos, spares on the hood seems to be a common thing to do in the Land Rover world, but I've never heard of anyone wanting to carry a spare on the hood of their Jeep. I definitely don't plan to carry a spare there. But with this hood, you could if you wanted to.

 

i have seen this guys work on alot of BBS. i am going to just use CJ headlights and signals with poison spyder hyline "defender" flat TJ fenders. should look like my CJ a little. i will post a build thead once i get started. cant see buying fiberglass parts for a rock crawler.

 

A few photos of the test fitting on my LJ...

 

fb

 

so cool

gerald

 

Wow, very impressive.

 

I love the way the LJ looks with that top and the CJ front end.. Great job.

 

Thanks everyone for the very nice comments!
jeff

 

This is a really great project. Will the kit go into "production"? When could someone buy one? Any idea on target cost before shipping?

 

I just do this for a hobby, I don't bring this stuff to market, but sometimes my projects get licensed up by companies that do want to bring them to market, as happened with my fiberglass Jeep-tub trailer kit that's now on the market from Compact Camping (www.dinoot.com).

Early in this project I thought this kit might be a good candidate for a company to bring to market, so I got price quotes
from the fiberglass company that's manufacturing the trailer kit for Compact Camping to see how much it would cost to have this kit manufactured. The prices they quoted me suggest that the parts of this kit could be brought to market at prices right in the same range as the "factory replacement" fiberglass parts that you might find in the 4WD Hardware catalog.

I haven't tried to find a company that might be interested in marketing this kit, but if a company was interested I'd be
happy do discuss the possibility with them.

 

Think Collins Bros in TX.

 

I don't see them as a company that's involved in selling custom stuff like this, but if they contacted me I'd be happy to discuss it with them.

I don't have any plans to be proactive in trying to find a company to market the CJ Grille Kit, I'd rather spend my time and effort moving on to my next big projects .

I'm planning to to a bolt-together fiberglass M416 replica tub, based on the success of my fiberglass Jeep-tub trailer kit in the market, I think an affordable military replica kit would do very well. That's a project I do hope to find a company to market.

I've done some 1/4 scale concept models in fiberglass to prove out the mold and panel design, now all I've got to do is build the full 1/1 scale molds and make some parts.

Here's one of the 1/4 scale models:

 

Did you ever get in contact with someone about building these?

I'd be interested in a set of the standard ones for my CJ7

 

Project update...

I've had discussions with a fiberglass company that's very interested in doing the manufacturing of the CJ Grille Kit, but they're only a manufacturer, they're not in the Jeep market, so a company would still have to be found that is interested in marketing the kits. Since I don't believe there will be much demand for the CJ Grille Kit for the TJ/LJ, I haven't done anything to try to find a company to market the kit. I'd be happy to talk to any company that's interested, but I don't plan to go out to try to find a company.

Since the last postings in this thread, I've also done a Jeepster Commando version for the TJ, which takes a factory Jeepster Commando grille, and includes a custom hood and fenders to integrate that grill with the TJ:



I've also done a replica Hurst Commando shood scoop to go with it:



And one side project has developed out of all of this work that is going into production - I've done a set of fiberglass flat fenders (see post 41 of this thread, the flat fenders were a concept I had early on in this project). They're styled like the Willys MB/CJ2a flat fenders, and they include a TJ-compatible set of inner fenders so they're a complete bolt-on and all of the engine compartment accessories that bolt to the inner fenders will bolt right up, no modifications to the Jeep required. The company that's signed up for these is in the process of making their production molds now, so hopefully these will be on the market in the first half of this year.



And BTW I did do the military trailer tub kit that I posted about earlier, that's now in production (with a different company than those mentioned above). I've had a busy year .

 

Love the Commando front. Excellent work.

 

the flatty fenders look awesome..thanks for the update.....please update the thread with company info when it happens...thanks

 

I'm not sure I can do that - I've been told by the admins on this site that I can't mention anything commercial. Saying that the fenders have been picked up by a company for production I think is ok, posting the name of the company probably isn't ok according to forum rules even though I'm not an employee of that company, I'm just a guy who designs and builds this stuff as a hobby.