Hey, what's up, guys?
Ryan here from ExtremeTerrain and today I'll be reviewing and installing the Rugged Ridge
All-Terrain Fender Flares fitting your 1987 to 1995 Jeep Wrangler YJ.
This is gonna be for the YJ owner that is looking to upgrade or replace those old worn-out
faded or broken fender flares.
This is a great upgrade for those of you that have aftermarket mods such as wider offset
wheels and wider tires because it's gonna provide more coverage.
These are eight inches wide versus your stock ones, giving you a ton of more coverage.
That's gonna keep you street-legal on the road and keep you from kicking out rocks,
stones and mud, anything that could damage your body.
These are made of durable ABS plastic and they're very flexible.
They're also UV treated which is gonna keep them from any sun-related fading or cracking
issues.
These come painted in black but you're able to color match these and paint them any color
that you would like.
And with these, there is some joining required but I show you exactly how to do that in the
video.
These fender flares will fit up to a 33-inch tire, but if you do go any higher than 33
inches, you may have to trim these flares a little bit.
Now these comes with all brand new hardware to install and it is stainless steel hardware
so it's gonna stay rustproof, and with this kit, you get all four fenders flares.
Now these are incredibly priced and very reasonable for a full set of aftermarket fender flares.
At just around $270, this a great option to go with and Rugged Ridge even backs these
up with a 5-year warranty.
Now as far as installation goes I'm gonna give this a pretty tough one out of three
wrenches on the difficulty meter.
Expect this to take about a half a day to install and you will need some specialty tools
such as a drill and a drill bit.
Now, with that being said, let's hop into the install.
Tools that we used for this install: a drill, quarter-inch drill bit, 8-millimeter socket,
quarter-inch drive ratchet, 8-millimeter wrench, an 11-millimeter wrench, 6-millimeter Allen
key, Phillips head screwdriver, and a pry tool
So the first thing we got to do to get these new flares installed is take off our factory
ones.
So we're gonna start here up at the front.
The first thing we're gonna do is take our light out, so you'll need a Phillips head
screwdriver to get both those screws out, then we'll work on pulling this thing off.
So once you get this light, you're gonna get the socket on the back and you're gonna turn
it a quarter of a turn, that's gonna unlock it, then you pull this light out.
Then we're gonna set this aside because were gonna reuse it with our new flares.
So I got one of these out just to show you exactly what were dealing with.
We have this little plastic block and then we also have this little screw.
This little screw takes an 8-millimeter socket and what I'm gonna do with these little plastic
pieces right here is you can just hold them with a pair of pliers or you can use vice-grips,
but these are on the outside, they're on the inside of the fender and the screws are in
the inside of the middle fender, so you'll need to go from the back side with a socket
and then grab one of these little blocks.
So that's basically going to be all of these, so we're just gonna go around and get all
of these out and then we'll take this fender off.
Gonna take our vise-grips, we'll clip on to the block, hold that in place, pulling your
8-millimeter, get these screws out.
Now they are a little rusty and it really doesn't matter if you destroy them because
we have brand new hardware to install our new flares and we have to drill holes in the
new spots anyway.
And this one here, pretty much in the middle, is going to be up through and there's this
little angular plate as well, knock some of this rust off.
Make sure that we get a good seat on the socket.
So you're gonna want to spray them with some kind of PB B'laster or creeping oil, that
way that they will actually have a chance to come out.
So we're gonna use an 11-millimeter wrench to get these out, and hopefully they come
out for us.
Now the third bolt is gonna be way back in here so I'm gonna use that same 11-millimeter,
get this bolt out.
So we'll get this last screw out that we missed and then we can pull this whole section off.
So now that we have our front disassembled, the next thing we're gonna do is disassemble
our rear.
Now the rear is gonna be all of those little screws and little plastic blocks, so wanna
use our vise-grips and our 8-millimeter socket, just go around, get this whole thing off.
Now for this back one here, you're gonna need to pull this flap down that way you can access
the screw head from the back side.
It's gonna be the last one that we need to get out and then we can pull this flare off.
After you get all the screws out, we can pull the fender off and ditch it.
So at this point in time, we're just about ready to install our new fender flares, we're
gonna start here on the rear.
And just to point out, the rear is side specific, so you want to pick the correct side and you'll
know when you line it up there and you line up both of these edges if there's a slant
or not, we get the right side.
So the first thing we're gonna do, before we get this thing installed, is apply this
weatherstripping.
So we get this strip of weatherstripping and it has a little bit of double sided tape on
it.
There's a red piece to peel off of here and that's gonna adhere to here.
So wanna take this whole edge right here, gonna take an alcohol wipe, wipe it clean,
get any contaminants off there, then we're gonna measure this out, stick it on there
and apply it, then we'll throw it up there, tape it up, put it in position and start drilling
our holes.
So we got an alcohol wipe here, we're gonna open that up and wipe this thing down.
After you wipe it down, you want to try not to touch this edge because your fingers will
leave a little bit of residue on there and some oil and it might make that double sided
tape not stick as properly.
And do the edge nice and clean, toss that to the side, and we're gonna find the end
of this weatherstripping.
We'll get this thing on here so I'm gonna support that tire like that.
You're just gonna take this little piece right here, you're gonna peel that off.
Now you're gonna have a longer edge and a shorter edge, we're gonna place the longer
edge up top.
You wanna start down here, and when you're applying this you want to try not to stretch
it out because it may cause it to shrink once it's been on there for a while.
So we're just gonna gently push this over this edge, trying not to stretch it, and we'll
go all the way around and then we'll cut the excess off.
Probably be a good idea to do all of these first and that way you make sure that you
have enough to go around.
So we got it all the way around to the edge so we're gonna go right to this edge, we're
gonna cut this excess off
so it'll fit it nice and neat.
Now we're ready to set this up and get our holes drilled.
So like I said, the next thing we're gonna do is hold this fender up against the body
because we have some holes to drill.
There's a couple things that I want to mention.
We want to make sure that this front edge and this back edge are level with this body,
and also since on the inside, we have a welded seam right along here, we wanna make sure
that we drill these holes low enough that we don't run into that, so that's one thing
that you want to make sure when you reach up on the back side.
Also, we're gonna need to pull this wheel tub out slightly because when we drill these
holes higher, we're gonna need to get above that so we can put the nuts and the washers
on the back side.
So I'm gonna grab a friend, he's gonna hold one side, I'm gonna hold the other side, we're
gonna mark all these holes, we'll pull back off and then we'll drill.
We're gonna get this back side close to this body line right here and we want to make sure
we're level with the bottom.
Hang it down some just like that, wanna make sure that that edge is tucked down a good
amount.
And we're gonna go around, you can use a paint marker or a Sharpie.
I'm gonna use a Sharpie, and we're just gonna mark all of these holes.
So now that we have all of our holes marked, we're gonna around and drill all of them.
We're gonna use a quarter-inch drill bit.
If you want to drill a couple of holes and then line it back up, bolt that on, and make
sure those other holes line up, that would be a good idea.
So after you drill all the holes, of course you want to paint all of that bare metal so
it doesn't rust and the next thing we're gonna do is get this wheel tub out.
Now, since some of our hardware in here is really rusty, we don't want to take the whole
wheel tub out, so what I'm gonna do is just get a...pry up underneath of this edge, we're
just gonna pull this edge down enough that we can get our hand back there, that way we
can get the washers and nuts off.
We'll just do that, just go all the way around, get this whole edge out and then we go from
there.
So the way these things are gonna install, we get this long Allen-headed bolts, these
are gonna go through the flare into our tub.
On the back side, we're gonna put these rubber spacers.
These spacers, since there's a gap in here, are gonna take up that space there and allow
that to seat properly.
So we're gonna go through our fender flare and we're gonna put a spacer on the back.
Now you're just gonna get two different size spacers.
You have a bag of slightly thicker spacers, there's only 10 of them, and then we have
another bag that's gonna be the smaller ones.
We're gonna use the smaller ones, the shorter ones, for the back side.
So we're just gonna go around, put these spacers on the back, you can do one at a time if you
want, and then we'll need to reach up in there, do a flat washer and then one of those nuts.
Now, for this very back one, we're gonna need to go up through the bottom, so we'll leave
that flap open.
Now this one right here, this is actually gonna go into the inside of the body, so you
need to open your door and then access that from there.
So we're gonna open our door, flip our seat forward, and then same thing, flat washer
and a nut.
So after you get all that hardware installed, we're gonna go around tighten everything up,
you need a 6-millimeter Allen key for these bolt heads and then for the nut, you can use
an 8-millimeter wrench or a socket.
You don't want to tighten these too much, that rubber is gonna give some sort of dampening,
so we just want to snug them up a little bit, make sure that they're tight enough that they
won't come undone or fall off.
That's gonna do it for the back end, we're gonna go up to the front, we're gonna do that
same thing but we're gonna start with the flare extension, that's gonna set the bottom
of the back side of the front flare.
So like I said, we're gonna start up here with the flare extension, this is the section
that's gonna section go right across here, that's actually gonna set this back side for
when we drill the holes.
Now, we did have an issue with our nuts here so we wound up drilling them out, we're just
gonna nut and bolt them together.
So we're gonna crawl under here, get our hardware ready, bolt this thing on.
If you were able to reuse your factory bolts to get this flare extension on, wanna tighten
those back up with an 11-millimeter.
So now we're gonna work on the flare.
So the same thing we did for the rear flare, we're gonna do for the front flare.
We're gonna start by wiping it down with isopropyl alcohol, we have a wipe right here, we're
gonna apply that seal to the outside of that gasket, then we're gonna fit it up and mark
our holes.
So we're gonna grab our flare, open this thing up, then we'll wipe it down.
Now, remember, you don't want to touch that edge after you wiped it down.
Pick up our seal, gonna start peeling some of this layer off and then remember, we want
that top edge to be on the top, the longer edge.
So we're just gonna start it down here, get it to wrap around, and same thing, we just
want to peel little sections off at a time and you want to try not to stretch it.
Excess off, toss that aside, and then we can mark this up.
All right, so to get this front fender installed, the way we're gonna line it up is we're just
gonna take that light that we took out, the market light, and we're gonna install that
back into our fender, that's gonna allow us to somewhat line it up for when we put this
thing back on.
So once we line this up, we want to make sure that the back side of this plug is gonna poke
through that hole in the fender and then we could probably get one of these screws in
here.
So we're gonna take a Phillips head screwdriver, try to get one of these screws started and
that should help us hold this fender up somehow.
All right, so once you get this thing up there, you're gonna use the light to hold it in place.
You want to line that that up.
You might need longer screws, the stock screws don't seem to be long enough.
So we got longer ones to hold that in place and we went around and marked all these.
So you want this to sit flush back here with the bottom edge of the tub and up against
this nice and tight.
We marked all of our holes and we're gonna go ahead and drill them out.
We're gonna use that same quarter-inch drill bit to drill all the holes and then we'll
get all that hardware installed.
So another thing I'd like to mention is on the back side of this fender, right in the
middle of there, you're gonna have this standing seam, so you want to make sure that you drill
below that and if you reach underneath of the metal fender and feel that, you'll feel
that edge standing up.
So just drill in between that section just below that, that way you'll be able to get
the washer and the nut on there.
Now most likely, you want to take this fender back off when you drill these holes, that
way you don't mess up your new fender.
And once you get all of those holes drilled and you paint all of that bare metal, we're
gonna do the same thing we did for the rear fenders, installing that hardware.
Once you get all that hardware installed, we're gonna go around and tighten everything
up, same thing we did for the rear, 6-millimeter Allen key, 8-millimeter wrench.
So last thing we're gonna do on the front end is install this light.
So you want to tighten up these screws you put in, you're also gonna plug that bolt back
in.
So we're gonna reach underneath of there, just gonna put that bolt back in its socket
and you'll feel it set in and then we'll turn it about a quarter turn and then lock that
in place.
Make sure that these are nice and tight.
Now, once you get this side installed, you can do the same exact steps to get that other
side installed.
However, that's gonna wrap up my review and install.
For more videos and products like this check us out at extremeterrain.com.