FIRST Bit of Body DAMAGE

I have to say that I’m a bit bummed that we’ve officially sustained our first bit of body damage on our JL Wrangler. I didn’t even realize it until our JL thawed out enough to be washed but as soon as I saw it, I knew exactly when it happened. What really sucks is I wasn’t even taking on a tough obstacle or doing anything really hard – I was simply climbing an off camber hill and slid into the snow bank a bit. Anyway, most of the damage was really contained to the driver side fender but the base of the B-Pillar picked up an indented scratch as well. Here are a few pics to show you what they look like.

Here you can see where the fender hit the snow bank. The hit was hard enough to pull the black trim far enough way that a fender tab had pulled out from it. Fortunately, that was easy enough to get back in but in doing so, I noticed that some of the sub-structure underneath the fender had broken as well.

The real bummer is that I would soon come to realize that the fender itself had broken. As you can see in this shot, there’s a good 5″ crack running up from the base of the fender about a half inch from the body.

Here’s another shot of the crack and a bit closer up. As much as Cindy and I love the new JL Rubicon fenders, I have to say that we are disappointed to see them be so brittle and break so easily in this way. This never would have happened to our old JK fenders as they would have dented, flexed, folded and or torn off well before they would ever crack or break. It is a big reason why even after 11 years, Moby is still running trimmed version of his ORIGINAL fenders.

Okay, so here’s where I know I’m being a bit of a baby. It’s kind of hard to see but if you look closely at the base of our B-Pillar, there’s maybe a 4″ scratch going across it and toward the end, the metal is dented in a bit. Not really a big deal but lame that I would have gotten this snow wheeling instead of out on the rocks.

Anyway, just thought I would share our first bit of body damage with all of you. :grayno: