Half door upper frame question

WesRJ86

TJ Enthusiast
Supporting Member
Joined
Jun 8, 2019
Messages
167
Location
Stringer, MS
Do the same upper frames fit both the factory half doors as well as soft doors? I ask because I'm looking at putting a metal skin on some soft door frames I have and adding bushings so I can attach the uppers. My bottom frames don't have those 3 places for the "pins" on the upper frames. I noticed on the soft doors that the holes are closer to the outside of the door than the factory half doors. See pic below. I'm trying to figure out if there are 2 different upper frames depending on which half doors you have.

58DDC260-2979-4C5D-B75D-94B1D2C85B76.jpeg.jpg
 
I have a set of Bestop soft doors and factory half doors and the uppers are not cross compatible. I had to buy a set of half door uppers separately for the factory doors.
 
Thanks for the reply 👍. Exactly what I needed to know. Can you tell if the only difference is the pin location? Or is there anything else that's obvious?
 
It is mostly the pin location but also how the entire frame sits on the door. Half door uppers are stiffer where it sits on the door which aligns it to the door panel. The bottom of the soft door upper is just one big piece of flexible velcro so even if you were able to line up the pins you would want to attach it to the half door somehow to help secure it and there is no easy way to do that.
 
It is mostly the pin location but also how the entire frame sits on the door. Half door uppers are stiffer where it sits on the door which aligns it to the door panel. The bottom of the soft door upper is just one big piece of flexible velcro so even if you were able to line up the pins you would want to attach it to the half door somehow to help secure it and there is no easy way to do that.

Based off that, since I'm working from scratch, the regular half door uppers is what I should build for then. Similar to UCF's aluminum doors design. Not sure if you're familiar with those.