River Raider Off Road Tube Fenders Story and Photos by Gil "usmcdoc" Fortin
Let's start our review of River Raider's tube fenders with a little physics lesson.
Newton's first law is defined as: An object will retain its state of motion, including stationary, unless acted on by an equal and opposite force.
My Jeep JK goes forward and backwards, sometimes up and down. Trees do not, nor do rocks, snow banks, beer kegs and other items you may encounter in the wilderness. So when these items (stationary) come in contact with your jeep (object in motion) something has to give. Either the rock or tree moves or the JK stops moving.
Or in most cases, parts of the JK stop moving, usually parts you want to keep attached.
I learned this the hard way during the recent blizzard. I was out bombing around waiting for a hospital to call me.(I highly recommend offering you and your capable off-road vehicle to hospitals and emergency services when weather or situation makes "normal" vehicles worthless.) I was just driving along when I could hear the same sound you get when you stuck things in the spokes of your bike as a kid. It was my fender being eaten by a mud tire.
Luckily I caught it before it was completely ripped off and lost on the highway. I still have no clue exactly what caused it this time but I know I have done it many times with trees. They just peel right off the body and hopefully do not destroy anything in the process. Now I will give Jeep some credit with this, they do come off easy, and this can be an advantage when you want them off. But with my JK, what is on the Jeep stays on the Jeep, all the time.
It's not a Transformer but people still follow the steps like it is one. Hop out and attach this bumper and remove the flares, unhook the sway bar, attach the tire deflators, plug the winch in the hole, remove the top, attach the anti-scratch magnetic panels, put blue masking tape on the areas that are not covered by them to prevent additional scratches, remove doors, press the horn 3 times and TAAADAAAA! I have an off-road vehicle.
Sorry, I like to spend as little time at the trail head as possible, and my JK is exactly what meets the eye.
So it was time for some tube fenders.
There are more and more tube fenders out there every day for the JK. Some are high quality and some are Chineese crap. I wanted to stay away from the cheap, thin fenders. I wanted something that would require a lot of effort to mangle should I drive it into a tree, rock or Sierra Club member. I also wanted something "finished", I was not in the mood to Bondo and fill a set, as they were going to be painted to match my JK. So I wanted a complete set of 4 solid built tube fenders that did not look stupid and were ready to paint.
Newton's second Law: A body will accelerate with acceleration proportional to the force and inversely proportional to the mass.
A credit card weighs in at around an ounce and my arm at around 30lbs. My arm moved forward with force to buy them. But it was greater than the mass of my credit card to resist. So the card moved with force proportional to the desire to buy them.
So I did.
This is my excuse and I am sticking with it even if the physics are incorrect.
I own a set of RROR skid plates. The fit, finish and durability made the purchase of these fenders a no brainer. The fenders, made from 1.5" DOM tube and heavy sheet, make any worries of ripping them off a thing of the past. They also come in two widths, factory and narrow. I am running a wider, off-set wheel and needed a little more tire coverage so I went with the factory wide ones. But if you want to tuck everything in go with the narrow ones.
And the best part: For an additional fee you can get them GatorHyde coated right from him. This solves the whole issue of a finish as you can leave them black or they can be painted to match your JK. It's a nice spray on finish with a good texture. This gets rid of any chipping issues and also provides a good surface to stand or lay on when working on your JK. They are great if you need to get something off a roof rack as well.
First step, remove your factory flares.
I just pulled mine off, as well as the liners. The front fenders have some screws and those were removed after a little while of swearing and going "What the $%#$ is keeping this $%^&ing front fender on??!!"
You will also need to disconnect the marker light and retain it or plan on using another one.
The rear ones have nothing really holding them on and pull right off.
Now if you want to "save' your little clips and not mangle your fender too much, you can pick up a clip removal tool. It will salvage most of the clips and it does make life suck less.
Just like every other River Raider product I have used it comes with stainless screws. Sorry but this is a big deal with fenders no matter how small of a touch it is. It also comes with spacers for the front and well nuts for the rear. With this amount of hardware going in you would seriously have to put in some effort to mangle the metal the fenders are mounted to.
So whip out the drill and start mounting! Here is a tip for the rear: Use a step drill to drill out the holes for the swell nuts. The sheet metal likes progressively larger holes and the step drill leaves fewer burrs.
Remember with any holes you put in your JK, you want to hit it with paint before you install everything. That is unless you like rust. Nothing is more fun than finding rotted out body panels in a few years because someone was too lazy to paint a hole.
Ok, we are going to pause here.
I am not going to cover every step in this install as it is pretty much a bolt on item. I would get a buddy to help you hold them when tightening the bolts. I would also "snug' the bolts till you get it all in place before you tighten everything.
And that is about it.
I snapped some pictures with the fenders still in the black GatorHyde finish. Sorry they are not the best images but it's kinda hard to get good images in a blizzard. It's even harder in a blizzard that you want to go and play in.
But they still look good! I took these pictures to show you what they look like in black, like what came with your non Sahara JK. I have a Sahara (or what is left of one) and will be painting mine, we will get to that next. Also if you notice you can re-use your side markers. For the time being I just zip-tied mine to my grill support and they look and work just fine. I could have just left it that way but I swapped those out for some LED side markers from a local truck stop.
The Sahara painted fenders grew on me. I always like them better than the black fenders. I hate wax powder and other crap that builds up on black fenders. So the plain black GatorHyde was not going to do, but they are pretty much paint ready so I went right to work.
You can paint them with pretty much anything with the right prep for the paint you are using. I searched online and found a company with good reviews that offered my color code in spray cans for a fraction of the Mopar price. I could have gone with the canned paint but I wanted to do this like you, the average JK owner, without full spray gear.
So I got three 12oz cans of color matched spray paint, a can of adhesion promoter, and three cans of a quality automotive spray clear and a bottle of acetone. You may also need a primer depending on what your color is in order to get the "right' shade. Light color primer for light colors, dark for dark, you get the idea. My JK is dark green so I was able to just use the black as a base.
CLEAN! CLEAN! CLEAN!! Clean the living daylights out of anything you want to paint with something able to remove wax and residue, I used acetone. Then remember to MASK MASK MASK everything you do NOT want painted. Because you will end up painting it, and then have to clean everything again.
I first sprayed with adhesion promoter because GatorHyde is a type of "plastic', and plastics like to get some. Then I laid down multiple thin coats of my base color. These fenders have texture and would be kind of difficult to screw up with a run or drip, but still do a few lighter coats before laying it on. Remember that your JK has a base and clear coat and quality touchup paint is the same. So your base color will not be all shiny and happy, a clear coat is needed.
Three 12oz cans was the right amount for all four fenders to place a nice good heavy coat.
And I would have to say they are pretty much an exact match in color. With the GatorHyde finish I think they look great as well.
One of the other perks to River Raider's fenders is the ROOM!! I am running 37's on a 5.5" lift, and I could run 40's with the space these fenders give. This allows you to run a larger tire with a lower center of gravity, less lift and less money.
If I cut (and I plan to) the sheet metal to the front of the wheel well that is NOT the fender as shown in the picture below you can see how much space I have. There is nothing in the way till I hit the inside of the fender, and that is a LOT of up travel with my current setup.
Newton's third law: If body A exerts a force on body B, then body B will exert an equal and opposite force back on A for the same period of time.
I have no doubt if I laid my JK on its side that these fenders would hold up. I have zero fear of trees and other attacking trail items . I have stood and bounced my 200+ lbs of rage on them and not a squeak. But I will tell you right now that there is no way in hell I am having someone drive another jeep on my fenders to show off no matter how much they beg! Maybe when someone wants to pay for any other damage they do to things other than the fenders, because I am sure they will be fine.
With all the shady, sub-standard products out there, it is nice to be able to spend my cash on a top end USA made item from a respected and quality manufacturer. There is no gimmick to River Raider Off-road's tube fenders; you get exactly what you pay for and more.
