99Chilipeppercherokee

Hello all I have a 99 xj and it has a 4 in lift and I am running 32s right now. A little small for the lift but it works. The main problem is that it has pocket flares which look not great imo. I just don't like the pockets and exposed screw heads and it dwarfs the tires with the lift. So I was wondering about doing different fender flares that don't have the rivets showing, or maybe just covering up the rivets somehow to make it look better but I haven't been able to find anything that would work without having to do a bit of body work. Any ideas?
​​​​​​It has a beefier rim and tire setup now but...

That Jeep Guy XJMJ

If those are genuine or mount like genuine bushwacker flares - in my experience your kinda screwed for a clean body. They run a self tapping style bolt to secure those flares and after removing them in favor of any other style flare (that doesn't atleast cover the same surface e area) your left with exposed rough holes in the body.

Can simply* buy matching color untouched front femders to replace the affected onw currently but the rear of body isnt soo easily resolved without body work.

You could try coating the heads of the hardware as is currently then it's not as noticeable? Really youd only get soo many chances at removing/re-installed those self tapping style hardware before they are no longer effective at even holding the flairs on.

If those flairs do not use the self tapping style hardware then I suppose the world is your oyster. Find a more appealing flare and roll out

Undone

Yes. Unfortunately we can see from the picture that the bolt holes are undoubtedly custom and drilled significantly higher than the stock fender flare mounting holes. The flares themselves are of course also significantly bigger than the stock ones. I agree that those kinds of flares do sort of "dwarf" certain tire sizes.

Now that doesn't mean you're absolutely screwed, it just means that if for example you wanted to go back to the stock flare mounts & stock flares, those custom-drilled holes will then be visible outside/above the border of the stock flares unless you put in some work. It kind of depends on your skill level and how much time you want to put into the project.

If you really wanted to fix it, you could bondo the self tapping screw holes, get a color-matched can of paint made up for you somewhere to match your paint, spray the paint onto a paper plate and then carefully brush on the paint over the bondo spots with a hobby brush. Brush a dab of primer onto the bondo first. I know, I know...the poor man's method. But you could do it. I say go for it, honestly.

99Chilipeppercherokee

Yeah I was thinking along the lines of just doing bondo but I don't want it to crack and fall out and I also don't want to go into the doors and stuff to reinforce it. In researching a bit I found some metal resin or something that comes in a stick and I think that might work pretty well. I saw somebody use it and it looked like it turned out well so I think I'll give that a shot and see what happens. Hopefully it's a quick project because it's my daily so wish me luck and if there are anymore ideas I'd be happy to hear them before I dig into it

ijeeep

I always thought those flares would look even better if the mount screw recesses had screw cover plugs to match the contours of the flares.
Filling them with polyurethane sealer and splashing on some paint might look good too.

Undone

Yep, good luck with the project. Steel epoxy like JB Weld might also work well. It might just depend on how big the holes are, kind of hard to know without seeing that.

ijeeep

Use auto structural epoxy to bond patches to the back side and fill each screw hole. File and sand to contour. Prime and paint to match.

99Chilipeppercherokee

So the weather finally got nice around here and I had some time to check out what's underneath the flares and it's pretty gruesome... It's a pnw jeep so no rust at least, but just not pretty at all. The holes are all stretched out and isn't really worth repairing. I'll either have to do some other flares overtop or just get new fenders or something. One thought that I had was to buy some body armor and put that over top of the fenders. I am planning on painting the jeep at some point anyway so I would be able to color match it which could be cool. I haven't seen any pics on the web of somebody that has done this so I'm not sure how that might look. Any thoughts?

Undone

By this do you mean removing the existing flares and then putting body armor steel over the panels? If so, I like that idea a lot.

You don't really need fender flares.

That Jeep Guy XJMJ

rear qtr guards are a fantastic idea to resolve the rear situation - fronts could be as simple as just replacing the fenders especially if you do end up re-painting.

StuckBuck

That’s really the best and only way I’ve seen guys fix it on the rear. In my opinion those flares are a cancer to the xj world. I’ve had 2 jeeps with those installed by the previous owner. The jeep I have right now just has pop rivets someone put in the old holes. Being that there’s not a strait panel to be found on my xj it doesn’t look too bad but on a clean body would probably be noticeable. Maybe some pop rivets and touch up paint for temporary until you get the armor wouldn’t be to bad?

99Chilipeppercherokee

Ok well I think I'll just do that. I'll probably just go for the full set to make things easier. Dirt Bound off road has a nice looking set for 750 so I went for those which should look cool. I'm sure there will be a bit more body work to do here and there but...

Undone

Awesome. Please post pictures when you finish the work. Always fun to see these kinds of projects.

StuckBuck

For sure post pictures if you color match, that’ll look great!

99Chilipeppercherokee

Ok will do. The tracking number says that the lead time is between 10-45 days so don't expect pictures immediately lol