Poison Spyder JK Body Armor
 

Okay here is a write up (my first, be nice) for Poison Spyder JK Body armor on an unlimited. This is just meant to be a helpful guide and not to replace the Poison Spyder's instructions which are quite good minus the pictures in the included black and white print off included. So I hope this helps and let me know if there is anything I may forget or screw up.

First up the box they came in was great everything arrived looking great, a big thanks to Stan at Northridge Panoka. The armor arrives bare steel and this is nice as there is no shipping damage. The armor is beautiful the cuts are amazing and the spider detail looks great. If you haven't heard a thousand times already Poison Spyder makes nice stuff.

So step one is locate a Jeep, preferably your own as you will be dilling 42 holes in the side of it. As a man it may be tough to sit down and read the instructions but this is one of those installs you really need to just sit down and read them before hand, maybe even twice. Also an inventory check is not the worst idea either my hardware pack came with 3 or 4 extra nutserts but no extra allen bolts.

One of the reasons I got the armor was to cover up and protect some rust from rock chips forming on the body panel joints on my rocker panel area. So I also went ahead and sanded off the rust and masked off and applied primer to the affected areas.

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I find for these small areas a dremel with a small wire wheel will save you some time and get a nice clean surface for painting.

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I wont show pictures it's kind of straight forward and boring like watching paint dry (hope your ready for lots of that) I applied two coats of primer and then two coats of touch up paint from mopar via nail polish brush style applicator, followed by 2 coats of clear. All after the previous coat had a chance to dry.

So now lets install some tub armor. Go ahead and take those doors off, trust me it will be easier.

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I also ran masking tape along the edges of the tub armor so as to not scratch the Jeep's paint during the installation process. I started with the drivers side just like the instructions say and had a friend (ok it was my wife) help me get the rocker panel in place and used 4 bar clamps to hold her in place (the tub armor not my wife). Then I checked the spacing around the doors as per instructions as well as spacing around the fenders front and rear and adjusted the armor as necessary. Then checked spacing, adjusted, checked, adjusted and then probably adjusted it back to where it was the first time. I just tried to ensure the contour of the armor matched the body contour and that spacing around doors looked even.

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I used four clamps as I figured this would help get the armor nice and tight against the body. Next I used a spring type centre punch to mark the forward and rear most holes. I think it is quite important to take your time here and really get those dead centre.

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Now with the armor still clamped to the body I went ahead and used a small drill bit (size dont matter as of yet as far as I was concerned at this point) and drilled the two centre punched holes out. Then I gradually went up drill bit sizes to get the 1/4" holes as per Poison Spyder instructions. The instructions say to drill through only the first layer of sheet metal so that's what I did (at this point). Pictures I took of this turned out bad so I wont post them, pretty straight forward anyway.

Now remove the tub armour via removal of the clamps. Now go ahead and as the instructions say drill out the two holes to 25/64" like last time I slowly graduated up drill bit sizes to get to the 25/64". Now either my drill bits are cheap (quite possible) or I did something wrong but my nutserts would not fit in to this 25/64" holes. So I went ahead and used a 13/32" drill bit and then they went in great. Also at this point is when I realised like so many others that when test fitting the nutsert on certain holes the nutsert will not sit flush to the body because of the second layer of sheet metal inside the holes. I like many others went ahead and drilled through this second layer at this point. Perhaps if a person just inserted the nutsert as far as possible that during the compression and deformation of the nutsert that it would fit with out drilling the second layer but I kept thinking how unpleasant it would be if I was wrong.

At this point was when I realised I had drilled two rather large holes in my Jeep and was definatly committed to the install. Take this time to congratulate your bravery and remember that every hole from now on is not as painful. I mean at this point what are you going to do? Stop? I don't think so.

Okay so lets go ahead and put some paint on the edges of the holes for rust protection, don't forget that if you drilled two layers of sheet metal like i did to get in there and paint that one too (A neck like a crane would be ideal for trying to see the second layer hole painting but a light and laying in the dirt will get this done as well). I allowed time for the paint to dry (1 hour or 2) and went ahead prepared my nutsert install tool.

I did a fair bit of research before installing and decided that if there was anyway I could come up with a nutsert install tool that I would go ahead and get one. I called the 10 tool rental stores all of which acted like I asked to rent a 3 headed pink monkey. Not one of them had ever heard of the tool. So I moved onto google and found a few pneumatic style install tools and a few massive $100 plus dollar tools as well. There was no way I was spending 1/3 of what I paid for the armor for this tool. For whatever reason I checked out Princess Auto (which to my understanding is Harbour Freight for Canadians) and what do you know they got one for under $30.00. Now this praticular nut sert tool looks and operates very similar to a standard rivet tool, my only concern was that the description on the package said it did up to 1/4 x 20 (the size you need) aluminum nutserts. This had me scared as already are we at the max size the tool can handle but I am going to attempt to use this on steel rivnuts instead of aluminium as the tool was designed for. In preperation for a grueling forarm work out I engineered some sissy/cheater bars to try to Binford 9100 up my cheapo rivnut tool (see Tim Allan on Tool Time for Binford reference). Here is the picture.

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As I stated before I had 4 extra nutserts in my hardware pack so I tested out the install tool on a dry run. It required a fair bit of forearm strength (married guys like myself should be able to handle this) but it actually worked. I had to install the rivnut onto the threaded end of the nutsert tool squeeze the handles to compress the rivnut release the handles and thread the rivnut further onto the nutsert tool and squeeze again but it ended up working great. Here is what you are trying to accomplish.

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(Picture makes it look like I am going bald but there is just something wrong with the camera.....I swear)

Now fully envigorated that my cheap naturedness had not caused me to end up with a useless nut sert tool I went ahead and installed the 2 nut serts into the 2 holes already drilled. I also applied a dab of silicone to inside or crushing portion of the nut sert before installing it in the panel thinking that it may seal out moisture. The PS instructions say to go ahead and now install the tub armor on the Jeep using the allen bolts into the nutserts you just installed and then double check the fitment to make sure you are happy with it. I cannot imagine for the life of me what you could do at this point if you were not happy. But anyway install body armor tighten allen bolts (Don't get too crazy on the torque here). Now we can go ahead and mark out via centre punch the remaining holes.

This is the point through trial and error that I would recommend that we only half follow the instructions. As I had better success with my passenger side doing it a little different then the instructions suggest. Contrary to PS instructions instead of marking and drilling the remaining 19 holes i marked and drilled the top 2 rows of holes only. I then removed the body armor and installed the nutserts (after painting exposed metal from drilling). I then went ahead and reattached the body armor using all of the top 2 rows of nutserts. Once everything was tight again I went ahead and marked and drilled the bottom row of holes. I found by doing this on my passenger side as compared to following the instructions my holes lined up much better to the body armor. After removing the body armor (hopefully for the last time) You will end up with something like this.

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I chose to bedline my body armor rather then paint and we will see if this was a good idea some point down the road. I also opted to skip out on the body armor linings offered by Poison Spyder again we will see how smart this was. Now we can begin to paint though so go ahead lay down 2 coats of primer.

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Allow sufficent dry time according to primer used accounting for ambient temperature and moisture conditions (or wait at least as long as you can before the anticipation is about to kill you like I did). And then throw down 3 to 4 coats of your bedliner of choice, in my case Duplicolour.

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After bedliner is dry we can go ahead and install these on the Jeep. I think adding the dab of neverseize like the instructions say is not a bad idea so that's what I did. And went ahead and torqued all bolts with a torque wrench to ensure I did not go over 120 inch pounds or 10 foot pounds.

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To finish things up I went ahead and siliconed the entire top of the body armor my theory beind this is it will minimalize the ammount of dirt and water getting behind the armor while allowing any that does get behinf to be removed via gravity and bashing against stumps, rocks, small children, etc. (small children is only a joke please do not phone authorities)

Now sit back and enjoy. It is around 32*F here when I finished pretty much a perfect time to go for a victory drive with no doors or license plates or insurance (Jeep gets parked in the winter). This is the point where you discover just how damn manly and brave of a DIY'r (or just brave if your female).



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*TIP* If for whatever reason the allen bolt will not thread in smoothly when attaching the body armor DO NOT FORCE IT. Relax, take a breath everything will be okay. Check to see how far off the nutsert is from lining up with the body armor holes. Now begin enlarging the body armor hole via progressivley larger drill bits till it lines up. This is always nice to do before any painting but just make sure you do not strip a nutsert because you are in a panic or rushing. I beleive with a little research, confidence and proper tools the average Joe should be able to pull this off. Hope this helps and good luck.

BobbY SpaghettI

I want to do this sooooo bad but Im also very very scared of drilling into my body .....it turned out nice by the way:thumbsup:

GREAT write up!!! what an awesome job, and good idea on the silicon! I am saving this write up for when I do this install!

looks awesome, would love to do it myself. But as stated above kinda hard to bring myself to drilling the holes in the body.

Just installed my armor on Friday. It came out really nice like yours did. Here's some pics

It's crazy how a little armor can change a whole look!

The more jeeps i see green the more i i like it!! good job guys, they all look great :rock:

Great write-up!

Thanks!

Great write-up and good humor (which helps) as you drilled into your Jeep.