JD Keating
The inner fender liners are made of strong, riveted aluminum and are a one-piece design.
Words and Photos JD Keating @Camp.Crawl.Official
The Rubicon edition of the redesigned Jeep JL comes with 5 cm (2 in) of extra tire clearance in the wheel wells over the Sport and Sahara models. While impressive, if you’re keen on adding 40” tires and a long-travel suspension, these mods may get a little tricky.
Late last season, our 40” Cooper STT Pros began tearing into our OEM plastic fender liners during full articulation on the trails, ruining our beautiful colour-matched fenders. To find a solution, we came across a company called MetalCloak, which offers a simple fix for this with its Hi-Clearance Replacement Inner Fender Sets that are strong, riveted aluminum, one-piece designs to provide additional tire clearance (and other mods) for off-road vehicles.
JD Keating
Reaming out the existing holes.
A lot of companies offer various inner fender liner replacement options but always be prepared to start customizing your brand new shiny parts to make them fit. We were happy to see that the new fender liners we received from MetalCloak fit like a glove, but we still had to do a few modifications to the body.
Although the installation was relatively straight forward, we needed to ream out the existing fender attachment holes slightly larger on the front and back panels, while one new hole was required on the back liner. We know that drilling into a new (or new to you) vehicle is not for the faint of heart, but it was a simple process, clearly outlined in the instructions. We also admit that it did take considerably longer than we thought to complete, but what project doesn’t?
Installation was made much easier by removing the entire fender. Also, be prepared to replace several of the fender clips as they tend to break when disconnected.
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JD Keating
The front and rear fender liners installed.
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JD Keating
The front and rear fender liners installed.
Additionally, routing the headlight power cable was a bit of a pain and we couldn’t decide if we should hide the connection behind the liner for protection or outside of the liner for easy access in the future.
In the end, these replacement liners provided our rigs with approximately two more inches of tire clearance including up travel and tire stuffing inside. The right rear tire still slightly rubs but it’s a kiss we can live with, knowing the contact is not going to damage anything.
Overall, inner fender liners are a necessary upgrade when running larger tires on your JL, and we would strongly recommend MetalCloak for their quality design and overall fit. Plus, in our humble opinion, they look pretty darn good.
JD Keating
The result is much more clearance for larger tires without the concern of any damage.