When I got my first Jeep Wrangler a few years ago, I of course wanted to do some cruising and a little rock crawling with the top down and the doors off. I thought the Jeep looked a little weird with no side mirrors at all. (The red one shown at the end of the video with the baby tires and no mirrors was my first one, with a buddy of mine messing around with it. He called my tires the pizza cutters.)

I looked around for options. I didn't like anything available to bolt the stock mirrors on with no doors. Brackets that relocate your mirrors and/or fold back when you open your doors were not really appealing either. I especially did not like the idea of having to take the mirror apart (separate the top from the bottom part). I wasn't really excited about any of the aftermarket mirrors; they looked cheap to me. So I decided to build my own brackets.

Since I had begun messing around with a little home metals fabrication, and had built a small home made CNC plasma cutter, I drew up some plans.

bracket drawing

At first, I didn't put the cross braces on. I just cut the brackets, bent them, added some washers to act as spacers for that short upper leg, and bolted it on. It was cool, but the brackets and mirrors would wobble quite excessively in the wind when I was moving at a good clip down the road. This is also the reason I decided that I won't build them out of aluminum.

I then added the welded on spacer, and some ugly cross braces going across the top and bottom of the bracket. They did the job, but I eventually changed those cross braces to one in the center to clean up the look.

It wasn't until much later that some friends convinced me to offer some for sale. I went ahead and built a few extra sets and asked around in the Austin Jeep People group what they thought of them. AJP members were enthusiastic about them. I quickly noticed that a lot of Jeepers had the light bar across the top. The brace for that light bar extends down to the upper bolt that my bracket uses. That's why I designed the 1/8" spacer for Jeeps with the light bar. That's what you see in the top left corner of the drawing above. The bracket will go on top of the light bar brace. If the campaign is successful, when the questionnaires go out, you'll have the option of requesting the bracket with or without the light bracket spacer at no extra charge. You can see in the picture below, how I used an extra piece of gasket to act as a spacer.

DirtEater with light bar.

Speaking of gaskets, I had some custom cut for me. They are neoprene rubber. They're supposed to be pretty weather resistant. (Texas UV light is a main concern.)

At the moment, the brackets are not really compatible with electric mirrors. You may be able to remove the wiring from the door, but I would suggest getting another set of OEM style mirrors. Get some extra bolts, and you can leave the extra mirrors bolted to the brackets.

DirtEater brackets are currently compatible with 2007-present Jeep Wrangler JK models.

And just to be clear, the video shows me making prototypes with the plasma cutter, but production brackets and their bolt holes, and the optional 1/8" spacers for light bars will all be cut with waterjet.

Also, for now, the only powdercoat I was planning on using was that textured black. If you would like other colors, message me and we'll see what we can work out.