I will trim my hatch.

 

im first in line when you do 97+ guards!

 

-Not to impose on your thread, but wouldnt u want them to protect the tail lights just as much as they add to looks?? The ones i have on my 95 are robust & have saved my tail lights a few times only having to weld a piece back on once or twice. Might be more complicated to make but i pretty much made mine so just an fyi. Take a look...

 

Pics of the mounts?

 

I would also like some 97 & up ones!

 

We are gonna try hard to get the.mounts done this weekend then we will.be able to start hanmering them out sorry its takib so long just got busier then I expected

 

If ur reffering to mine, the last pic has the mount in the middle with a hole in the center for a bolt or self tapping screw. Inside the tailgate its just a flat piece of metal going back to the body & srews into the tail light housing to hold it in place.

 

So yours attaches to the hatch?

 

-If u can make solid mounting spots that skip mounting the guards to the plastic housing, then u got urself some real protection plus it deffinately looks killer too!! Note that u may have to grind some of the tailgate to make room for the added steel between the light & the hatch.

Heres a pic with the hatch open:


Heres the added brace (theres 2 per guard) that i was to lazy to put back on when i changed the brake light bulbs:


The quarter pannel mounting spot up close:


And heres my idea of welding a steel strip on the quarter pannel, drill, tap, & bolt em on solid:

 

I like that you used flat stock for the interior guards, but I would seriously hesitate to buy a tail light guard that requires drilling into either the body or the tail light housing for installation. That's far more trouble than it's worth as is evidenced by the rust you have created at the drilling sites. But yours was a personal design, so I get it.

I bought mine off ebay some years ago. They carry some weight to them, made of solid stock & beefy, but the design could have been tweaked just a bit more for a more functional fit. I'll explain the pics as I go. I do apologize in advance if I didn't resize them enough.

So this is what they look like:


Observe how little room there is between the guard & the hatch, even after the aggressive grinding I mentioned before. Plus I have washers behind the bolts to give even more room, and it still rubs. Now the guard is weaker & prone to rust. I'm not so sure I would want to shave the hatch that much - but to be honest it never occurred to me.



Mount: if you look closely at the rust spot just below the higher bolt, you'll see that there is a crack. That's because I ground down the steel to prevent rubbing on the hatch. The guard caught a tree & got bent back, thus cracking what was left of the weld.




Ground down. I keep painting it, it keeps rusting. It's a battle of wills!


Passenger side mounts:


See the gap between the body & the guard? Result of it being ripped back by a tree (yeah, it gets a little tight out there sometimes!). Never quite managed to get it back in place.


The other side - tighter fit, tucked into the body. A more curved design would have been even better.


I think that if the fabricator had welded the flat mounts to the inner surface of the vertical rod instead of on the side, the fit would have been better.

 

I would take my flat stock guards & add ur mounts to em & u got urself some good guards!! In fact, i think ill try to fab that up sometime this week & see how it goes!!

 

I'm moving this to Advanced Tech. This is not a For Sale thread any longer.

A new thread needs to be made once these are available.

 

Good idea ...

 

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

 

Need a lil help can someone take a couple measurements and a couple pics of their 97+ taillights for me? With hatch up and down as well as close ups? I cant get my in touch with my friend who has a 97
Let me know thanks