How I split my Rubicon fenders and kept the stock DRL in place.

[KansasJL]

I have been curious if this was possible for a while and haven’t seen anybody try it yet. I decided why not and went for it. I do have the AAL drl and bracket on order as well if it went horribly wrong. All I used was a Dremel with an engraving bit and a box knife. It could have turned out a bit better if I would have taken a bit more time and been a little more precise with my cuts on the first fender.
The front inner fender is actually in 2 pieces. The red lines on here shows roughly where you want to place your the first set of cuts with the Dremel with the engraving bit. It makes makes pretty short work of it, just be careful that you dont get too deep. The tab in the yellow box needs to stay. Use a box knife and cut the green line and blue line. I can’t help much on the perfect placement of the blue line because I messed that one up.

It should look roughly like this when you finish the red cuts with the dremel and pull the piece you cut loose. Pull up and separate the “2nd” piece.

this is what the “2nd” piece looks like out of the fender.

Then finish cutting the “1st” piece of the inner fender. Take a little time with this. On my cut I should have cut it long and then trimmed it down later when it was easier to work with.

After the ”1st” piece of the inner fender is completely cut away from the brackets that hold the light in place pull it out. Mine roughly looked like this.

I didn’t have time to take any pictures of the fender back on the Jeep but I will take some tomorrow.
I did use the AAL fender retaining hardware to help secure the fender and you will still have 2 of the stock 10mm bolts holding the light bracket to the Jeep. It seems to be pretty sturdy.

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[KansasJL]

with a little bit of tape and better planning on the cut for the side I think it would turn out a bit better. Driving 75 on the interstate yesterday in a pretty typical windy Kansas day the fender and lights seemed pretty solid.

 

[MCATDT]

I have been curious if this was possible for a while and haven’t seen anybody try it yet. I decided why not and went for it. I do have the AAL drl and bracket on order as well if it went horribly wrong. All I used was a Dremel with an engraving bit and a box knife. It could have turned out a bit better if I would have taken a bit more time and been a little more precise with my cuts on the first fender.
The front inner fender is actually in 2 pieces. The red lines on here shows roughly where you want to place your the first set of cuts with the Dremel with the engraving bit. It makes makes pretty short work of it, just be careful that you dont get too deep. The tab in the yellow box needs to stay. Use a box knife and cut the green line and blue line. I can’t help much on the perfect placement of the blue line because I messed that one up.

It should look roughly like this when you finish the red cuts with the dremel and pull the piece you cut loose. Pull up and separate the “2nd” piece.

this is what the “2nd” piece looks like out of the fender.

Then finish cutting the “1st” piece of the inner fender. Take a little time with this. On my cut I should have cut it long and then trimmed it down later when it was easier to work with.

After the ”1st” piece of the inner fender is completely cut away from the brackets that hold the light in place pull it out. Mine roughly looked like this.

I didn’t have time to take any pictures of the fender back on the Jeep but I will take some tomorrow.
I did use the AAL fender retaining hardware to help secure the fender and you will still have 2 of the stock 10mm bolts holding the light bracket to the Jeep. It seems to be pretty sturdy.

Hi I am looking to chop my fenders without using any bracket similar to what you did. I have a few questions. Did you keep them this way and if so how have they held up? Could you do this without the AAL parts? Other than cutting them longer is there anything you would do different now that its been some time? Thanks

 

[KansasJL]

I didn’t keep them that way very long. I eventually went with the AAL bracket and lights. What time I did run the fenders like this they seemed to hold up alright.
I would suggest at minimum getting the fender retention hardware kit from AAL. Once you split the fenders they get a bit wobbly and the stock clips aren’t the most secure.

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