August 2001 -- After talking with Mountain
Off Road Enterprises (M.O.R.E.), I was convinced that their bolt-in
cage was by far the best cage on the market for my YJ. So, I picked
up the basic kit with the optional two center spreader bars, and a
frame tie-in kit to provide greater stability and strength.
The roll bar bolts into the
floor. But with the optional Frame Tie-In Kit, it bolts directly to
the frame.
A week after ordering, the cage arrived. The
unpainted hardware for this kit included nuts, bolts and washers.
All the separate pieces are pre-bent to fit your Jeep's interior
exactly. Only minor drilling is required. I began by painting some
of the bars. Half way through, I decided it would be best to wait
until after I installed the kit. This way if there was any
wrestling and hammering to be done, I wouldn't have to repaint and
touch up the surface. See pictures below for some pieces of the kit
and pre-install pictures.INSTALL PART
1:
In order to install the cage, I
first had to remove the hardtop and slid it back about a foot so
that I was able to fold down the windshield frame. I then removed
the old factory roll bars that attach to the YJ windshield frame by
two Torx-style bolts per-side. These are basically useless
additions to the factory roll bar if you ask me. I was happy to see
them go, considering the only purpose they ever provided me was a
hand grip when wheelin. I then had to remove one bolt from each
side of the window securing bracket. This is the three-bolt bracket
located just above the factory speaker locations. This allowed me
to fold the windshield down for the first time in my Jeep life. I
was actually surprised to find some interesting items that fell
behind the windshield frame. See pictures below.
INSTALL PART 2:
In the event of a roll over,
you're protected.
Now that I had the front windshield folded down
and the hard top semi-removed I had much more room to install the
new M.O.R.E side bars. Before installing these into the Jeep I
first had to attach the small mounting brackets that was recently
attached to the factory windshield support bar. These brackets are
designed so that the factory bolt in roll-cage design remains
consistent. I actually did run into a problem when it was time to
remove these brackets from the factory windshield support bars.
Jeep thought they would be funny by using some odd-ball torx style
bolt which had a slightly different tool requirement to remove.
Instead of rushing down to my local Jeep dealership which is about
45 miles away, I grabbed some big vise-grips, clamped them down
really hard, grabbed my good friend Mr. Sledge-Hammer and with a
couple hits, the bolts loosened up and I was on my way. I'm sure
this wasn't the best method of removing those bolts but in a time
of need I am prepared to adapt. None the less the bolts were
removed and replaced with grade 8 hardware when these brackets were
installed in the new M.O.R.E. side bars.
It was now time to install the new side bars, we'll not
completely install the bars but put them in place and hand tighten
the bolts for now since other roll-cage addition are going to also
be installed. See picture below.
(Click on image for large view)INSTALL
PART 3:
The roll cage does not reduce
your options when it comes to hard tops, soft tops, hard doors,
half door or soft doors. Whatever you run, the cage allows enough
room for functionality.
Next step included installing the cross bar and
sliding the two optional spreader bars onto this bar for later
installation. I placed the cross bar with two spreader bars into
position and connecting them to the left and right side bars.
M.O.R.E. designed the side bars with easy slide over and bolt-down
cross bar mounting tubes. This was really easy and included sliding
the bar over top of the side bars cross bar mounting tubes. I then
drilled and thru-bolted the cross bars down on each side as
instructions indicated. See pictures below.INSTALL PART 4:
After
installing the cross bar and setting the two optional spreader bars
into position it was time to start bolting some of these bars down.
Since I had already drilled and bolted the cross bar down to the
side bars its was time to drill and bolt the side bar floor board
mounts and bolt them into position. I went ahead and began drilling
and bolting down the floor-board side bar plates. Before drilling
these holes I had a friend pull on the side bar bringing the side
bar as close as they could away from the dash and towards the inner
rock panel. This step isn't required but I wanted the cage to be
further away from the dash than the bar was setting at rest. this
would avoid rattling or rubbing on the dash, plus this would give
me a touch more leg and foot room in the floor-board area. After
securing the driver-side floor board mount I followed the same
steps on the passenger-side with the exact same results. See
pictures below for details. INSTALL
PART 5:
Here are the brackets which
allow you to connect the cross bars.
Now my M.O.R.E. roll-cage is starting to look like
a full-cage and actually as is its provided a lot of strength with
just these steps installed. This would be known as the standard kit
with no options. I went with both options available, both frame
tie-in and two center spreader bars. My next step was to mount
these spreader bars, but first I had to measure, then re-measure
the location of these spreader bars in order for the two bars to
sit in the same distance from each other (centered). I then went
ahead and drilled the holes threw the cross bar and using the
supplied bolts I secured each spreader bar into position. This was
a straight-forward and easy step, it just required a lot of
drilling (6 holes total). See pictures below for more details of
the spreader bars during there mounting steps. INSTALL PART 6:
The M.O.R.E. Cage is almost coming to a conclusion. I went
ahead and finished the sport-cage's finish by sanding and priming
the rest of the bars for a couple coats of paint. Using the same
rattle can matched Krylon red I sprayed a first coat on all the
bars including the bolts, nuts and other bars that already had
paint (basically everything). I then had to wait a couple hours for
that coat to somewhat dry before I sprayed a couple more coats of
red on. For some reason this heavy-duty Krylon paint takes forever
to dry even at 75 degrees with the sun baking on it.
Around the dash and floorboards I had to mask off
some cardboard pieces so that I didn't get over spray on
everything. Behind the bars on the dash side were a little tough to
get, being about 2 inches away from the dash, but with a couple
distant sprays I was able to mist a couple good coats on. See
pictures below for pictures of the cage un-painted and completely
painted red.
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