The Spice Denim fabric I ordered arrived this morning. I couldn't be happier with the match of the painted fiberglass and the fabric. It's extremely hard to render colors accurately on a monitor, especially when the textures are different like these two are, but I think these photos show how nicely they match.



I've got 4 yards of the fabric, which is more than enough to make both soft sides and a soft barn door with enough extra to make another one or two of of either of those.

 

Very Nice ! These Soft Barn Doors are a great Summer option, and achievable as a DIY, thanks to your doing these excellent write-ups . Thank you !

 

If you can weld and sew, a soft barn door shouldn't be too hard of a DIY project. If anyone decides to make their own and needs any further info or guidance I'll be happy to help.

BTW it only gets hard if you've got a later model hardtop with the wide hatch - in that case the width of the barn door doesn't work with the geometry of the stock tailgate hinges. The reason is that because of the width of the opening, part of the barn door is outboard of the stock hinge pin location, so when the door swings out that part of the barn door swings in and contacts the door jamb. To do a barn door (soft or hard) for a later model hardtop you need wide-swing hinges that have the hinge pin moved outboard, like these HD hinges a friend and I made when we installed a hard barn door on his '14 JKU (photos taken before the hinges were painted). Compared to the stock hinges you can see the difference in the hinge pin location...





These hinges were made in my home workshop, so if you're a DIY-er making a soft barn door, perhaps you could make hinges too.

 

Great " Heads Up" tip. I'll make hinges with pins outboard, good use for some of the parts and pieces I have.

 

I've been following quietly. Nice work. I, like others, would be willing to test any of your stuff.

My thoughts on which of the four window sizes to produce? Any of the early sizes. 2-door more than 4 and I'm a JKU driver.

My reasons:

Older rigs more likely to be willin to have people modify as they're owned, paid off and such.

2 door as they seem more willing to modify.

With that said, as a JKU owner I'm willing and able.

FD.

 

Thanks for the input. There is a company that's expressed interest in marketing the slider window kit, so at this point think I'll just wait for them to tell me if they want to move forward and which of the window sizes they want me and the RV window company to start with, I can make any of them work. It might be that they'd want to do the JKU first if only because that's what they drive and use to demo their products.

What will need testing is the end-user installation - it's pretty easy for me to remove the factory hardtop windows and install this kit, but will it be easy enough for the average Jeep DIY-er? That needs to be tested.

 

The Line to Test starts here. But, mine is a 2015 2dr Hardtop.

 

2008 JKU sometimes hard and sometimes soft (it's old, you know how it is!)

 

Getting the Spice fabric today and seeing what a great match it is with the paint made me do a few new color renditions this afternoon - here are a couple with matching Spice soft sides rolled up and rolled down.

 

I did some more "coloring" last night...