Has anyone tried using fender flares with quarter panel armor? Rough Country says that you cannot use fender flares with their armor but it seems like it would just require slight modification but I am uncertain. Hoping someone has some experience with this. I'd like to hear from anyone that has the armor installed even if you dont ha e fender flares, can you explain why or why not it wouldn't work based on your knowledge of how the armor fits. Thanks

 

i have the flares but no armor.
your flares will fit with minimal trimming of the rear half of the flare, shouldnt be much.

 

Thanks for your reply jeepman. This is reassuring because I already have the fenders sitting in the basement and cannot return them but I've also ordered armor before it even occured to me that they may conflict. Rough Country wrote me a one word answer when I asked the question..."NO". Not much help. Thanks again. Still would love to hear input from others

 

No problem,

Is this what you bought?
https://www.roughcountry.com/jeep-xj...xoCrKUQAvD_BwE

 

Yes, I bought the front and rear armor kit. Have not seen it in person yet as I am working out of town. Been ordering parts from my hotel room hoping to have a garage full of boxes when I return. It's hard to think everything through when I dont have the jeep with me to look at.

 

If your fenders have not been cut up yet, then yes it will all work. Pretty much you will trim the fenders for the flares and not for the armor. Then put the armor on first and flares after. Should be simple!

 

I feel like I will probably have to trim the armor to fit the same cut on the fender for the flares. If so that will probably be a pita compared to a sheetmetal fender but I'll do what I have to. Now I'm more worried about how they clip/hook/bolt on and if it will still work with the thickness of fender+armor. I will be able to find out for myself next week when I get back in town from work but hearing from yall is making me more confident about it

 

https://www.bushwacker.com/bushwacke...front-and-rear

Click installation ^

The flares are designed to leave more material than the armor. If I was to guess, your armor will go right to that bevel on all the fenders, so any bolt of the flares will be on the intended material. Now your rear armor halfs that fender, the back half I suspect you'll need to shave the armor thickness off of the flare. Should be a cakewalk.

 

Well, you guys are reassuring. I'm going to go for it and I think I will take pictures and maybe try to do a small write up because outside of these few comments I have found zero info on this particular subject. I still havent found one person on the internet that has both flat flares and armor.

I appreciate all the input. It will be a week or more before I can do this but I will post back.

 

So I got the Bushwacker flat flares out and started mocking them up and I think they look awful, cheesy, and cheap. This came as a shock to me because every Jeep image I see online with these looks dope. In real life, not so much. I feel like they will look fine at 100' but up close they look really cheap next to the super solid RC fender armor. Now I firmly believe in the phrase, "to each, his own". In other words if you like the flares, good for you, that's ok. I respect others opinions but these things will NEVER be on one of my Cherokees because I have a strong negative opinion of them. To be fair though, they seem like they would do their job and feel sturdy. I will be posting a brand new set of flares for 4 door whenever I'm allowed to post items for sale.

So unfortunately I will not be doing the write up that I had proposed. But I do have some info to share. Namely the most important thing to know is if you use these with fender armor you WILL have to trim a good bit of the armor, especially the front wheel wells. The wheel well profile is a much different shape for the flares than it is for the armor. It also appears that the upper fastening hardware will have to be longer to pass thru armor+fender. That's my 2 cents.

 

Thats too bad to hear. I am the opposite of you. I think they flats are the only flares I would install on a XJ.... I loved mine at least.

So whats next then? No flares?

 

X2, I've stood on all of mine, pretty stout for plastic but not invincible. Flares aren't armor, they serve their purpose though!

 

I had Bushwacker flats over my ORF rear armor and it wasn't showroom-perfect or anything, but it worked fine. I had to cut the back ends off to make them flush with my cut-and-fold. The only problems is there's a lot of tress in the PNW, and a lot of the trails were forged by old Yotas and CJs, so they are narrow...even more so when things are off-camber and slippery mud. The flares themselves held up fine, but they mounts are just plastic 'cups' that are held into the sheet metal with small bolts, and then the flares screw into those. Take a slight hit, they're going to try to pop off and start tearing up the mounting holes. They're fine if you wheel out in the desert or open rocks, but for me they were just a stopgap (WA requires tire-width flares) until I could get a full steel set of flares.

You can see the front kind of 'flopping' a bit away from the door line because one of the mounting holes failed.