Issues with GenRight or other aluminum fenders?

Wildman said:
Okay I tried to look around to see if anyone had posted about this but couldn't find anything. If it has been discussed before I apologize.
I have been searching and researching all the different highline fenders and trying to get past all the marketing BS on vendors web sites to decide which fenders I wanted to go with. I had pretty much decided that I was going to run the GenRight highline aluminum fenders when I started talking to a fellow TJ owner last week.
He is running the Metal Cloak fender now but had installed GenRight aluminum fenders before that. When I asked him why he had switched he told me that he had actually BENT the GenRight fenders. Now this shocked me since I had asked many people before if the aluminum fenders had any issues and if it was worth the weight savings. Up til then I had been told that they were as strong as the steel fenders and yes switching to the aluminum fenders was worth it.

So I don't know if this was a one time thing? Or if it is a issue. I know Blaine uses them on some of his builds and I know where he likes to play so I figured that there wasn't any issues. Has anyone else bent a aluminum fender when hitting rocks or trees with them? The brand doesn't matter just curious if my plans to try and put my TJ on a diet is a misconceived plan. I was looking at replacing all my armor with aluminum to try and drop the weight.

The other fenders I have looked at is the JCR fenders. Does anyone have any experiance with them?
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You wanna bend the fender or you wanna ruin the tub? But yes, we have bent the everliving crap out of them and I tell folks all the time, if you are going to JV, don't get the flares. The last guy that didn't fully believe me wound up with his flare exactly flush with the side of the rig where it got pushed over. Surprisingly, Genright told him to pound sand when he asked about a warranty.

You can't pay me to install steel fenders. I will let you pay me to remove steel and replace them with aluminum though. FYI and this is a big giant FYI, the MC are not even in the same ballpark as a highline fender, not only not in the same ballpark, not even in the same city, county, or state.
 
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Sundowner said:
I had the option between the GenRight steel and aluminum sets; I went with steel. The weight isn't much higher than stock, the strength is much greater than either stock or aluminum, and when coupled with an aluminum corner there shouldn't be too much chance of tub damage. Shouldn't.
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I'm sorry.
 
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L J said:
Blaine recommends aluminum fenders with no flares for the places he wheels.
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No, I recommend avoiding certain trails in JV unless you want however much the flare sticks out to be flush with the side of the body when you get to the top.

Some folks ignore our advice. We have told several to leave their full doors in camp. 15 feet into the trail, doors come off and we get to watch their friends and passengers carry doors up the trail all day. Some days we should just be quiet and enjoy the show.
 
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Wildman said:
I tried the rubber flares if you look at the video and the first time I really rubbed against some trees it ripped two of them off. I have seen a few people get very creative with removable flares up here. Because of the rain in WA they are very strict about tire coverage and mud flaps. I made removeable mud flaps because they would get ripped off when back up and get caught between a tire and root or rock.
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Our buddy Adam won the Shaffer chassis for his YJ. He got in a hurry to make a trip and zip tied the rear panels on, lots of them, but zip ties nonetheless. Halfway through Aftershock he gets a bit hung up trying an optional line, rock snags the panel, he drives through, panel dropped to the ground. Just like in the cartoons.
 
mrblaine said:
You wanna bend the fender or you wanna ruin the tub? But yes, we have bent the everliving crap out of them and I tell folks all the time, if you are going to JV, don't get the flares. The last guy that didn't fully believe me wound up with his flare exactly flush with the side of the rig where it got pushed over. Surprisingly, Genright told him to pound sand when he asked about a warranty.

You can't pay me to install steel fenders. I will let you pay me to remove steel and replace them with aluminum though. FYI and this is a big giant FYI, the MC are not even in the same ballpark as a highline fender, not only not in the same ballpark, not even in the same city, county, or state.
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And that is what I was looking for Blaine. I guess I can't run some trails in JV because unless I go with MC I can't remove the fenders. But it is nice to know that they can and do bend. I'm not saying that in a bad way. And if I ran them and abused my rig I don't expect GR or any other company to warranty them. I was just wanting to know because I had never seen anyone talking about it.

My first dent was in my half door on my first trip out in my TJ. Hadn't even made the first payment on it yet and I got wedged between two trees and BOOM a nice dent in the door. I got most of it to pop back out but it is still there.

So aluminum it is and I'll have to deal with bending if it happens.
 
Wildman said:
And that is what I was looking for Blaine. I guess I can't run some trails in JV because unless I go with MC I can't remove the fenders. But it is nice to know that they can and do bend. I'm not saying that in a bad way. And if I ran them and abused my rig I don't expect GR or any other company to warranty them. I was just wanting to know because I had never seen anyone talking about it.

My first dent was in my half door on my first trip out in my TJ. Hadn't even made the first payment on it yet and I got wedged between two trees and BOOM a nice dent in the door. I got most of it to pop back out but it is still there.

So aluminum it is and I'll have to deal with bending if it happens.
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Don't misinterpret. They didn't give up without a fight. They pushed the grill over and the fan hit the shroud. The corner of the grill was caved in a bit. He is a member on here. I may point him here and get his version.

This is the trail, this is not the hard spot.
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Why would any TJ owner think that he/she could run a trail like that and not receive a significant amount of damage if not properly equipped to do so?
 
Jerry Bransford said:
Aluminum Defender Zero which is flush with the body. I don't think they make them any more.

View attachment 83308
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They don't. They quit production rather than solve a simple design issue and add a small brace behind the welded joint at the outer channel. The fenders cracked at the welds and rather than fix the problem, they discontinued the product.
 
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FWIW my steel PS hilines weighed in at 31.6 lbs. Stock weighed in at 18.6 lbs.

Looking back I wish I would have waited another month or two and gotten the aluminum GenRights.
 
mrblaine said:
They don't. They quit production rather than solve a simple design issue and add a small brace behind the welded joint at the outer channel. The fenders cracked at the welds and rather than fix the problem, they discontinued the product.
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According to them, they were also built out of 6061, but they never answered my question on how they managed to bend such a tight corner in that material. Conclusion: they couldn't have been T6 and bent, so they had to be either welded or not-T6. That was shortly before they started disappearing. Come to think of it, they didn't answer any of the questions I had about that fender... :unsure:
 
I wonder how common the cracks really are in the PSC aluminum Defenders. After noticing my post-impact wrinkled tub & a few small gouges in the front of mine I looked for a crack but they're still fine. I knew they had been discontinued a few years ago but wasn't sure if maybe they had that design flaw fixed by now. At any rate mine are still crack-free.
 
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Sundowner said:
According to them, they were also built out of 6061, but they never answered my question on how they managed to bend such a tight corner in that material. Conclusion: they couldn't have been T6 and bent, so they had to be either welded or not-T6. That was shortly before they started disappearing. Come to think of it, they didn't answer any of the questions I had about that fender... :unsure:
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Well, they actually are out of 6061 T6 and that channel isn't bent. It is welded out of 3 pieces and then ground to the radii on all those corners. Stupid way to make that and no doubt something to do with the elimination of the product.
 
mrblaine said:
Well, they actually are out of 6061 T6 and that channel isn't bent. It is welded out of 3 pieces and then ground to the radii on all those corners. Stupid way to make that and no doubt something to do with the elimination of the product.
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I had originally asked them if the material was press-formed and then tempered to T6, and all I got back was: "We do not do temper press forming. It is not needed on the way we manufacture them." Technically true, I guess...
 
Sundowner said:
I had originally asked them if the material was press-formed and then tempered to T6, and all I got back was: "We do not do temper press forming. It is not needed on the way we manufacture them." Technically true, I guess...
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And again, it is understanding the material and how to manufacture items out of it. By the time they got through with all the welding, it was no longer tempered and had similar strength to one of the grades that could be bent to make the channel. They spent a lot of time and money making a product out of a material that wasn't suitable for the method they used to manufacture it. And, that lead to a problem that caused the failures in the form of cracks at the welds.
 
mrblaine said:
And again, it is understanding the material and how to manufacture items out of it. By the time they got through with all the welding, it was no longer tempered and had similar strength to one of the grades that could be bent to make the channel. They spent a lot of time and money making a product out of a material that wasn't suitable for the method they used to manufacture it. And, that lead to a problem that caused the failures in the form of cracks at the welds.
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That's why I was concerned: if it was welded and ground there was no way that the corner was still tempered after all that heat was applied, so the most important part of the structure was...well, absent. And I just didn't get a warm and fuzzy feeling when asking them those questions...so I eventually started looking towards GenRight, who also don't give me warm and/or fuzzy feelings. They give me flap-wheely feelings, but that's a story for another time, when I will get to prove how good I am at sniveling.
 
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