Video Review & Installation

Hey, guys. Today I'm here with the Rugged Ridge Front Half Door Pair, fitting all 2007 to 2018 JK Wranglers. So, the half door was iconic on the earlier model Wranglers and it was so popular that they brought it back for the JK because of a number of different benefits. These aftermarket Rugged Ridge half doors are gonna be for the JK owner looking for that open-air driving experience and they want more visibility like what a trail door offers. However, they want the best of both worlds with a solid door that's gonna offer solid security as well as some solid protection. These are also gonna be very easy to take off and put back on the Wrangler because of the lightweight build of this as well as being a lot smaller obviously. So, it's a lot easier to grab than that awkward grabbing point of your full door. These are also gonna be very durable made of an ABS material that is UV treated. So, you can put these on, take these out to the trail, beat them up, and they will still be okay. You can keep these matte black like this. They won't fade or crack in the sun because they are UV treated, but these are also completely paintable so you can color match them to whatever color your Wrangler is. So, at the moment, these are gonna be at a pretty steep price point at roughly $1,100 at the moment. However, you do have to keep in mind if you do have a four-door that that price will double if you buy both these front and the rear. However, this is gonna still be a more budget-friendly option compared to the genuine Mopar half doors, so you are saving a couple of bucks there and you also are getting a different design with these. So, compared to other trail doors on the site, I personally think that you're getting a lot more out of these. They do give a really clean look to the side of the JK just like the OEM half doors would and you are getting a bunch of functionality and an OEM feel to these doors like other tubular or skeletal options. So, personally, I think that these fit very well and they are a solid build for an aftermarket half door, so that will explain the price. Install is gonna be a one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter. You will have to do a little bit of assembly to get these installed. However, it's nothing you can't do with a couple of hand tools and about an hour's worth of your time. So, speaking of the install, let's jump into that now. The tools that I used for my install today were an impact wrench, a flathead screwdriver, a quarter-inch drive ratchet, a Phillips-head screwdriver, a half-inch socket, a T50 and T40 Torx bit, a 5-millimeter Allen key or the provided Allen key, and a T25 Torx. So, the first step in taking your doors off is removing the two Torx bolts that are holding on the door. So, I'm gonna be using a T50 Torx bit and a quarter-inch drive ratchet just because it's smaller and it won't be able to ding our door and scratch our paint to remove those. If it is getting close to your paint, I would recommend just putting your finger behind it to avoid contact with the tool and your door. So, that's one. We can go to the bottom one. You can use an impact to make this a little bit quicker. However, an impact gun or a tool may not fit in this awkward space here. So, before you actually remove your door, I would recommend that you take your mirror off if you are swapping it over onto your half door. You are just going to remove these two Torx bolts and you're gonna be using a T40 Torx bit. So, make sure you have a hand on your mirror. You don't want it to fall out. So, after those bolts are out, you can remove your mirror. So, our last and final step to removing our door is to unlatch our limiting strap here. Just have to slip it right off. And then, we can unclip our door harness. So, after our door is completely unattached, we can lift up and move it to a safe location. Now we can do the same thing on the other side. So, obviously, as you can tell with all of the things laid out on the table that we do have to do a little bit of assembly to get these ready to mount up to our JK. However, I did want to go over a couple of features about the construction and just about the functionality of these half doors overall. Obviously, I can't bring the OEM half doors or the OEM full doors on the table and give you a side-by-side comparison but I did just wanna go over a couple of things. First off, this is going to, obviously, be a half door. It's gonna open up that open-air driving experience. It's gonna open up a lot more visibility on the street and on the trail, just giving you a better experience overall. These are very durable. These are made of a UV-treated ABS plastic material on the outside with a black-powdered coated steel frame on the inside. So, it's gonna be impact-resistant, going to keep you safe and protect you from inside of the Wrangler, and these are gonna last a very long time. The plastic material is also paintable. So, you can paint it and color match it to your JK. So, this also is gonna have a couple of different functions that are similar to the OEM style door. You are getting a lockable, fully functionable handle here. It's obviously gonna be a different style than your OEM door. However, a lot of trail doors really don't have a fully capable handle like this will. So, on the topic of trail doors, this is going to be the in-between between your full OEM half door and your basic skeletal or tubular trail door. This is going to offer you full protection, more security while you're on the trail instead more of those basic options that are open and see-through and branches can come in and smack your legs while you're on the trail. So, this is going to offer you a little bit more security while you are out doing that. It's also gonna come with a couple of different features. I'll flip this over in a second so you can see the interior of these but it's gonna give you an OEM feel interior. It's not gonna be basic like some of those other options and it's gonna transfer over your mirrors to this or you can get a second pair of mirrors if you did wanna keep your factory mirrors on your full doors for the time being.You also get a couple of different things. You have a door handle, a grab handle here that is actually pretty good quality from what I can see. And then, you also have OEM-style door hinges. So, instead of being plastic like this, those are gonna be steel, black-powder coated so they're gonna resist any rust or corrosion and those are gonna be able to take some abuse and hold up this door very well. So, before we can mount this up to the Jeep, we do have to do a bit of assembly. I'm going to flip this over so we can assemble the inside and then we'll bolt up our mirror in just a second. So, like I just mentioned to you, guys, you can tell that this is a textured black material. It's gonna have a more homey feel or a more OEM finish material feel to the inside of your JK instead of a standard tube door. You do get a pocket here and that is all great compared to other doors that don't have that. So, our first is going to be installing our little grab handle here. So, you are gonna take this square piece, pop that over here. Take your T25 Torx bolt, thread that into the steel frame of the door here and we can do the same thing on the other side and then we'll take them down at the end. So I like that these are here. These give it a more finished look than just holding up a nylon strap. After those are on there, you can take a T25 Torx bit and a quarter-inch drive ratchet and tighten those down. Trying to make sure that the fabric is inside of that piece here. It is gonna wanna shift on you, so just hold it in place with your other hand while you tighten down. So, this will come with half-inch bolts already on here. We do have different hardware to attach our doors that are very similar to the OEM hardware. So, we are gonna remove those with a half-inch socket.So now we can install our door hinges with the provided hardware. These will be left and right specific. They will come in different boxes. We are installing our left-hand side right now, so you can place that over your nut plate and thread that in place. It may be helpful to grab a flathead screwdriver and pull up on that nut plate similar to the tailgate one where it kind of shifts around so you can adjust it for the fitment, for the striker in order for the door to open and close. So I'm gonna stick my flathead in and kind of pull up on the nut plate just so I can thread our new hardware into place. So, after you have those two threaded in, you can take a 5-millimeter Allen key or the provided Allen key that they gave you and just tighten those down. Now we can do the same thing on the other side. So now we're ready to mount up our door. So in order to close your door and get it to latch correctly, you may need to adjust the bolts and the door hinges. I wouldn't recommend changing your striker if you are putting your full doors back on. But if you do loosen those up, you can move this half door around and adjust it to close correctly. So, it may be easier to mount up your mirror while your door is already on, so we are just going to insert the mirror where the mirror should sit. Then we can take the provided bolt with the provided washer and thread those into the mirror. So, after those are threaded in, you can take a 5-millimeter Allen key and tighten those down. So, Rugged Ridge is gonna provide you with two nylon straps, one is going to be for your door limiter. You will have different pockets in here to allow you to adjust it to how far you want your door to open. And then the other is a door handle. You can hook it on this latch here so you can pull it to quickly release it and open up your door. So, I'm gonna install that one first. So there's a smaller pocket at the end which you can slide over the handle. And this will just make easier to open and close your door since there is no actual handle here to open your door. Then, we can move on to the limiter strap. You can hook the one side onto your door hook here, and then depending on how far you want it open, we could just say here, we can choose the closest pocket to attach that to our Jeep and that will limit our door from popping out and our mirror to hit our cowl there. So now you can do the same thing on the other side. So, our last and final step is to reinstall our retaining bolts on our door. You can use that T50 Torx bit and we're gonna tighten those down. After those are on, you are all set to go. So that's gonna wrap it up for my review and install on the Rugged Ridge front half door pair, fitting all 2007 to 2018 JK Wranglers. For more videos like this, keep it right here at extremeterrain.com.