Bent premium soft top rod

[Jean1982]

Interesting. You may be right. Those arms weren't available by themselves before. I'm not sure if you can get them off. I never tried since I bought the whole hinge/5th arm assemblies.

Quadratec has them listed as "pre-order", and most mopar parts sites show them as "discontinued", so really not sure you can actually order them solo. Our car is at the dealership to check the extend of the damages, we'll see what they say. So far I know both 5th arms and the 5th top bow are dead.

Regarding my original question, it seem the 5th arm is press-fitted on the hinge. Takes more than a gentle pull to slide it off, but this member got it done using a trick hammering combination :
https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/forum/threads/broken-soft-top-lift-arm-assembly.49217/

Last question if you dont mind, since you ordered a new set of 5th arms with hinges, did you have to re-install the cable for the latching mechanism ? If so, how did that go ?

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[word302]

Quadratec has them listed as "pre-order", and most mopar parts sites show them as "discontinued", so really not sure you can actually order them solo. Our car is at the dealership to check the extend of the damages, we'll see what they say. So far I know both 5th arms and the 5th top bow are dead.

Regarding my original question, it seem the 5th arm is press-fitted on the hinge. Takes more than a gentle pull to slide it off, but this member got it done using a trick hammering combination :
https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/forum/threads/broken-soft-top-lift-arm-assembly.49217/

Last question if you dont mind, since you ordered a new set of 5th arms with hinges, did you have to re-install the cable for the latching mechanism ? If so, how did that go ?

Ahh. Yeah you can't buy those then. I literally searched everywhere. They are discontinued and nobody has them. The replacement is the hinge and bar complete. Send Benny @AllMoparParts.com a PM and he'll hook you up with a good price and free shipping. Unfortunately for whatever reason one side is way more expensive than the other. The cable is easy to install but a giant pain to get off the old ones. I ended up just opening the hinge mechanism and disconnecting it from the inside. The hinge will be toast once you open it as all the springs will unwind. I suppose if you were a rocket scientist you could get it back together. Yeah mine doesn't clear the garage header in sunrider mode either. Ugh.

 

[tsaimh]

Hello, It is possible to get them off. Use the two hammer method described in other posts. It's not easy but they do come off. Use some liquid wrench and pound away.

I only needed to replace the passenger side and found the part # 68506110AA online, called my closest dealership and they said it was on back-ordered.. However, they looked up the availability in other dealerships and found it in stock in another state.

They gave me the contact information and I ordered it from the out of state dealership and had them ship it to me. You can also replace the whole hinge but I did not want to mess with re-attaching cables, etc. Also, it's much cheaper to just replace the arms.

Good Luck.

 

[Johnnypbravo]

I purchased both a bearing and battery terminal puller. The bearing puller will not fit behind the arm so do not bother with it. The terminal puller fits but not strong enough to pull the arm off by itself, however if you use the battery terminal puller and crank it up as much as you can then take a hammer and with the claw end and a shop rag place the claw end behind the arm and give the hammer a good pull the arm will pop right off. If you line up the new arm properly it will easily go back on.

 

[elieah]

Can i do this repair (removing the broken piece attached to mechanism and replacing with new rod) while the soft top is still mounted on the jeep?

 

[JeepGA]

I'm a bit confused now. I'm pretty sure those were the correct rods.

From what I see you can get the hinge + 5th arm
https://www.quadratec.com/p/mopar/s...6th-bow-arm-wrangler-jl-unlimited/driver-side

Just the 5th arms (which are bent and need replacing)
https://www.quadratec.com/p/mopar/5th-bow-folding-arm-wrangler-jl-unlimited/driver-side

Or just the top lift arm, that are also attached to the hinge but never really an issue.
https://www.quadratec.com/p/mopar/lift-arm-wrangler-jl-unlimited/driver-side


My question was more like, in the eventuality of being able to find those rods, is it even possible to unbolt them from the hinge to begin with ? I've seen quite a few post here of people unable to do so...

Dealer is still trying to get it under warranty, but they say the entire tip needs to be replaced. Crazy. I'm going to look into those quadratech options

 

[JeepGA]

Quadratec has them listed as "pre-order", and most mopar parts sites show them as "discontinued", so really not sure you can actually order them solo. Our car is at the dealership to check the extend of the damages, we'll see what they say. So far I know both 5th arms and the 5th top bow are dead.

Regarding my original question, it seem the 5th arm is press-fitted on the hinge. Takes more than a gentle pull to slide it off, but this member got it done using a trick hammering combination :
https://www.jlwranglerforums.com/forum/threads/broken-soft-top-lift-arm-assembly.49217/

Last question if you dont mind, since you ordered a new set of 5th arms with hinges, did you have to re-install the cable for the latching mechanism ? If so, how did that go ?

Update. Quadratec has the entire arm and hinge assembly in stock and heavily discounted to about $120. My bent rod is about $25 but I got the entire assembly.

Hope to get it this weekend and install.

 

[JeepGA]

Update. Quadratec has the entire arm and hinge assembly in stock and heavily discounted to about $120. My bent rod is about $25 but I got the entire assembly.

Hope to get it this weekend and install.

Got it. Installed it. Now sporting a soft top for the first time in almost two years.

 

[Gorilla83]

Glad you got it resolved! I also bent/broke one of the arms and the dealer actually swapped/replaced just the arm for a reasonable amount last year, believe it was around 100 bucks.

 

[JeepGA]

My dealer says they can only install a new soft top and can't get the part. LOL

 

[Larsindy]

I bent mine pulling into the garage. (Seems like a common happening). The parts are available online. It's a complex part. You can't buy just the one rod, you have to buy the entire folding contraption. But I couldn't even figure out how to get the one one off. Where it attache, (under the screw cap) doesn't seem to come loose from the folding mechanism. BUT... I bought a conduit bender at the hardware store. While the entire soft top was still attached, I bent the bars back to straight (carefully. I hear they can break). I didn't have to remove anything to do this, but I did raise it to the sunrider position to access the bar, and get the bender around it.

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