One of them hybrid cage builds (lots of pics)

made total sense to me. exterior pillars become rock hangers on the trail.



why make your rig wider with lips to grab?

That's like saying you shouldn't put rock sliders on because you could get hung up on them.

Not everyone has an unlimited supply of taillights.
 
No..

Its more like saying you shouldn't put nerf bars with steps on because you might get hung up on them.

And its true.

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Painting the cage turned out to be a real pain.

I really should have painted the bottom of the roof cage before I installed it.

For the hard to reach spots in the interior, I tried brushing but it looked like hell. Spray cans cover evenly, but it's really hard to spray tubes up against windows, etc. Tin foil turned out be great for masking.

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Almost done, except for the headliner. Pretty sure I'll have to split it and re-cover it to get it back in.

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Almost done, except for the headliner. Pretty sure I'll have to split it and re-cover it to get it back in.

That was the only way I could get my headliner back in. I went to the junkyard, picked up another headliner, then cut it into 4 pieces, then did lots of measuring and razor blade trimming to make the cutouts to use as a pattern. I did this because my original headliner was perfect and I didn't want to ruin it. After I made the patterns with the old headliner, I laid it over the top of my headliner and marked where to cut with a Sharpie. Made all the cuts with a razor knife. then re-installed my headliner in two pieces. I split my headliner exactly in the middle of the B-Pillar tubes, then notched around the tube. For the C and D pillars I was able to just make cutouts for each tube with a slit going to the outer edge of the headliner. It took a lot of time, but it turned out good and looks almost factory.



 
By the way, I love your cage work. Mine is similar, but you've fixed most of the things that are wrong with mine. I may steal some of your ideas and re-do some of mine. I see a lot of weak links in my setup now that I look at yours. I didn't really know what I was doing when I had mine built.
 
Wow! I'm super jealous, that is a very well built and good looking cage!

And awesome headliner work Brent!
 
I'm trying to avoid vertical tubes outside of the body. Don't want to catch any rocks.

I figured that, but I'd hope the pointy rocks to hang up on wouldn't go so high as to be above the rear bumper.

Or hell, get something like the JCR rear quarter guards with the rub rail, then put a tube from the cage to the rub rail. Then you can brace it on the inside. Just throwing out ideas because I went through 2 pairs of taillights before I got the all steel ones integrated into the JCR quarter guards. That back area got a lot of love from trees.
 
I figured that, but I'd hope the pointy rocks to hang up on wouldn't go so high as to be above the rear bumper.

Or hell, get something like the JCR rear quarter guards with the rub rail, then put a tube from the cage to the rub rail. Then you can brace it on the inside. Just throwing out ideas because I went through 2 pairs of taillights before I got the all steel ones integrated into the JCR quarter guards. That back area got a lot of love from trees.

It's very common out here to be close to rocks and trees on the sides all the way up to the roof line. I can think of quite a few times where tubes on the side of my jeep would have royally screwed me. I have 3/16" thick quarter panel armour, that's the only part of the jeep i really cared to protect, since it's not just $20 and 4 bolts to replace like the doors and fenders.
 
I get it, it's the same way here. I crushed the drip rail on both sides of my XJ pretty good, not to mention the doors, rear quarters, etc. I'm just thinking if you are leaning that hard against a tree, you are usually going to be leaning on the side rail of the roof halo and not rubbing straight down the waistline of the body. A tube running down the side of the hatch sticking out 2" shouldn't be enough to keep you from progressing forwards when you run a tree or obstacle, unless it's literally a pointy edge of a rock jammed in there.
 
I get it, it's the same way here. I crushed the drip rail on both sides of my XJ pretty good, not to mention the doors, rear quarters, etc. I'm just thinking if you are leaning that hard against a tree, you are usually going to be leaning on the side rail of the roof halo and not rubbing straight down the waistline of the body. A tube running down the side of the hatch sticking out 2" shouldn't be enough to keep you from progressing forwards when you run a tree or obstacle, unless it's literally a pointy edge of a rock jammed in there.

Apparently it's not the same way there...
 
I'd say it's not the same out here.

I've been in plenty of situations where I'm glad I had tube there rather than sheetmetal.

Out here, 90% of the time you're leaning into a tree. I've never been hung up on one.
 
I'd say it's not the same out here.

I've been in plenty of situations where I'm glad I had tube there rather than sheetmetal.

Out here, 90% of the time you're leaning into a tree. I've never been hung up on one.

trees are not high on our list of concerns. Mostly jagged rocks.
This is the only example i had pics of, if i had tubes hanging off the side it would have been far more difficult to get out of that spot without body damage. As close as it looks, i never made body contact there.
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I watched someone flop because they caught their exo cage on a rock and it pulled them over. Granted, there were more things going on than just that rock, but it was the straw that broke the camel's back.
 
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