November 2014
After the 8 day off road trip, one thing I wanted to improve upon storage and organization. The Tuffy wheel well boxes are very appealing, but wildly expensive. I had seen a few Jeeps with 50cal ammo boxes mounted on the wheel wells. These offer more space than Tuffy. I figured I would try that.
There is not much flat space on the TJ wheel wells. In addition, to run a soft top, you need to inset the boxes from the outside of the tub to give the soft top frame a place to fit. Tuffy designed their boxes this way. As a result, with the ammo box, a bracket is needed to support the inboard side of the box.
I don't have a welder, so I used a torch, vise and hammer to bend a pair of brackets. Three holes are drilled in each box with one holding the bracket in place on the inboard side. The remaining two holes will attached the box to the Jeep.
I made a 2" wide spacer block to allow room for the soft top frame.
It is winter, so the hardtop is on. This will end up teaching me a very clever thing about Tuffy's design.
The liners are removed and two holes are drilled from above into the wheel well using the pre-drilled boxes as a template.
I put some black RTV on the bolts to seal the holes.
I attached the boxes so that the hinge side is facing the c-pillar. This allows the boxes to be set back as far as that can go without interfering much with the rear seat.
The lid opens into the pillar and the box is more or less accessible from any direction. What I don't like is that the lid keeps falling down and reaching into the boxes from the rear is difficult.
There is a much better option that I will install when spring comes.