Now that the weather is finally starting to warm up, I have been taking my top and doors off the Gladiator for the awesome, open air, wind in your hair (thankfully I still have mine) feeling.
Of course, taking the hard top and doors off presents a few new issues. First of all, where/how to store them safely and out of the way. For storage I came up with a hoist to lift the hard top off and store it overhead in my garage. It is comprised of 4 2x4s (cut to just over 6-feet), 10 pulleys, steel cable, 4 eye-hooks and a 40:1 worm gear winch from Harbor Freight.
I initially used some rope, but replaced it with steel cable after I noticed the rope had more stretch than I preferred. I also use some smaller cord to secure the hard top to the 2x4s supporting it so it won’t slide off as well.
For the doors I am using some wall mounted brackets that I purchased from Lowe’s along with some pipe insulation to offer a little more padding. On the brackets I replaced the thin foam with 1/2″ pipe foam and then I also purchased some 1″ split pipe foam that I put under the top of the window mount.
The other issue is side-view mirrors. I looked at several options, but most of them didn’t have great reviews with common complaints being they vibrated a lot and at highway speeds tended to fold in towards the car. I opted for the Mopar Trail Mirrors. I chose these because they utilized 3 mounting points, had larger mirrors (about the same size as the factory mirrors mounted to the doors) and worked with the Mopar cowl light mounts (Which I also added).
