DIY Hi-line

Hey guys,

I have some good plans for my heep but I'm running on a college student's budget. I am pretty much set on doing a hi-line hood. However, I want to do it using the stock fenders. There are a few guys on JF who have done it but their's seem to be too hacked up for me. Has anybody on here done the hi-line with stock fenders in a somewhat aesthetically pleasing way?

Cheers!

How do you plan to do that,, raise the fenders up ?

My plan is to cut the hood with a grinder at the seam that is about 3" up from the current hood line. The fenders are then able to rise 3" and bolt back in to the original bolt holes with the exception of a few that will need be re-drilled.

The main problem I am hitting is that the contour of the fenders is meant to be lower down on the grill...so when raised you are left with a gap in between the top of the grill and the mid-upper fender that butts against the grill.

People say you just have to "bend" the fender into place but that produces creases most of the time.

It's very hard to do an aesthetically pleasing hiline on a factory hood because of all the contours. I know Mike hilined his but he also has tubed fenders so it helped to cover the cut some. He then used hood pins to keep it against the grille

My advice would be to keep an eye out for a hood on craigslist as they are usually very cheap and do a test cut/fit. If you like it transfer the measurements onto your factory hood. If you don't like it then worst case you're only out a couple bucks

I did Rokmen hilines. Cutting the hood was the easy part. Just measured up 3" or whatever it was every 6" or so and connected the dots. I just used an angle grinder to make the cut and then used the grinder to smooth out and rough cuts. Came out nice.

Now like you said, I haven't seen really any DIY hiline using the stock fenders that came out that great looking, something always looked off to me. Plus you have to cover up the bottom with rock sliders that line up to the fender line or that spot will look funny too.

Mike's does look great. The fabrication skills come in handy for this type of stuff. I'm thinking about buying a welder and learning. Even if I fabbed some up and they looked shotty, at least I built them. I have been doing that but no luck so far. I will keep an eye out though. Thanks

Rokemen's are very nice. Sounds pretty straight forward, but I want to do this with as little cost as possible (without sacrificing too much quality of course).

I have some spare fenders laying around. Maybe I'll put the least rusted ones on the Jeep and while figuring out my hi-line situation I'll make flatties of those.

Thanks guys! I'm going to continue my research but I think everybody is right - raising the stock fenders will look pretty weird whether they turn out with creases or not.

dongalonga wrote:http://www.jeepforum.com/forum/f9/kwit-ynin-git-ta-cuttin-stuffin-37s-under-2-5-lift-621996/

I found that thread a couple weeks ago and thought it was awesome. Although I'm not sure I want to bend up my fenders that much. Thanks!

Jeeps unlimited in ri has hoods for almost nothing