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Old 12-09-2015, 03:34 AM   #1
Rich Z
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Join Date: Oct 2015
Location: Crawfordville, FL
Posts: 193
Default Grab bars installation - 2015 Wrangler

Decided that some grab bars were in order to help climb in and out of the Jeep, as the older I get, the harder this is going to be, I presume. So I paid attention to the various offerings and paid attention when getting in and out of the Jeep where having a hand hold would appear to be most advantageous. After some thought, it appears to me that a solidly mounted hand hold right at the front corner of the door opening would be best for me, so with that in mind, I found a set on Ebay and ordered them. Yeah, they are Chinese made, but honestly after reading about people having just as many problems installing the USA made ones, I couldn't see paying more for the same sort of headaches. Are the USA made ones better in any way? Beats me. There are some things that I just refuse to buy if they are made in China, but generally something like a hunk of steel just used as a grab handle seemed to be a pretty safe bet to buy Chinese without worrying too much about it. As long as it could be installed, what is there to worry about?

Anyway, I took pics along the way, so here goes....

First, here's what you get when you order them off of Ebay.


Yep, that's it. No instructions whatsoever. I contacted the seller and was told pretty much "It's easy. Get someone to help you if you are too dumb to figure it out." Well, not exactly, but that was how I took it.

Here are the tools I wound up using for the install:

  • Ratchet with long extension and long 13mm socket
  • 13mm nut driver
  • 6mm T-handle allen wrench
  • 6mm allen wrench socket
  • M8x1.25 tap
  • flashlight (to see what the heck I was doing)
  • index card (explained later)
  • masking tape (also explained later)

I checked the thread of the bolts supplied and found that they were M8 x 1.25. I wanted to know this because I heard that the threads of the nuts were heavily sealed with something, and I wanted to use a tap to clean out the gunk before installing the bolts back into them.


Since there were no instructions, I went and found a competitor's instructions online and used that as a guide. First order of business was to figure out left and right, and then which size bolts and sleeves go where.


So, to get really started, time to remove the two bolts that would be replaced by the bolts that hold the grab bar in place on both the driver's side and the passenger side.


The top one is pretty straight forward, and drops straight down into your hand when you have it loose. But the one on the side could be a problem. If you loosen it and it slips from your fingers, it would drop into never-never land in that plastic molding. Not sure what it would take to retrieve the bolt, but I'm sure the rattle it would make would drive me insane in pretty short order. So an ounce of prevention looked to be in order. Here is where the index card came in handy:


Cut it to 2 inches wide, rolled it up, and just inserted it into the hole around the bolt that needed to be removed. Fit pretty snugly, so there was no way the bolt was going to drop now. Worked like a champ.

And yes, I could tell the way those bolts came out that they had a LOT of permatex like gunk on the threads, so definitely cleaning out those threads was in order.




Now I'm not going to lie, putting in those four bolts (two for each side) was a lot harder to do than installing just four bolts should have been. Tolerances were very tight, so there was a LOT of fiddling needed in order to get both bolts started in the threads. The trick seemed to be to put the bolt and sleeve in the lower hole in the grab bar, and then use masking tape to hold it in place while you manhandled the top bolt and sleeve into the nut. It appears that the best method was to slightly start the top bolt just enough for it to catch solidly in the threads, but leave enough wiggle room to try to get the angle exactly right on that lower horizontal bolt to get it to thread in properly. Once you had the upper bolt started, you could remove the masking tape since nothing was going to fall off, out the door of the Jeep and roll underneath something in the garage. **Don't ask...**

Once you have them both started, you have to alternate between the upper and lower bolts till they are all tight, using the T-handle. You might get lucky and line up the bolts exactly right the first time you try, but it didn't go like that for me. The angles seem counterintuitive, and there wasn't much margin for error with the tolerances of those holes and recesses cut into the grab handles. So expect to wiggle the handle around a lot trying to figure out how to catch those blasted threads. You may have to pull the bolt and sleeve out a couple of times to eyeball it using a flashlight to try to figure out where it needs to be. You just cannot see the threaded hole with the bolt AND sleeve in place on the handle. But eventually patience should pay off. Just bear in mind that it looks like it would be extremely easy to cross thread the bolts into the threads in that hole, so beware and take care.

When you have the four bolts tightened down using the T-handle, then go back with the 6mm allen socket on your ratchet and crank them down pretty tightly so you have a real firm handle that won't easily work loose.

That's it. The next post will show the finished results...
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