Reviews for MORryde JP54-051 Fold Down Molle Panel for 07-18 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited JK
EASY ACESS FOR EMERGENCY EQUIPMENT THAT IS STOWED OUT OF THE WAY.
After being installed for over a year now - no issues.
The bar has never jumped out of its clips and works fine - will probably consider adding a velco loop to be safe anyhow but its a good sturdy platform.
Easy to install and a great way to hold my Molle Bags in my JK.
This is a handy way to squeeze out a little more storage room in my JKU. I like the military way it looks and the openings in the shelf offer endless ways to secure equipment to it. I added a Velcro strap to lock the fold down edge of the shelf to the support bar so it won’t unlock on its own when going off roading. I think it’s a great addition for my Jeep!
It does what I need it to do but is not particularly robust. The instructions are indeed poor. The packaging made me laugh. I figure the thing is made in China, so it has travelled a long way to get to me. The box is plenty big with tons of packing paper. However, the shelf was tossed in the bottom of the box then all of the packing paper went in on top of it. the only casualty was a bent bracket that i straightened. There are also extra nuts and spacers that are of no use as far as I could see. It's a good idea that just needs a bit of polish in order to be a 5 star product.
I questioned whether it would fit my '15 JK with soft top but it did, barely. Working around the soft top's tube frame is the key. It's tight but doable.
My usage scenario:
I use my Jeep for hunting and fishing. One of the challenges is when hunting out of the vehicle (like upland hunting) we tend to grab the guns, walk 4 or 5 miles in a loop back to the vehicle, then drive to a new spot, repeating this process 4 or 5 times in a day. Stowing and retrieving the guns is a big consideration - I want them to be safe & secure, but also readily available because sometimes you drive up on a covey of quail and want to get after them quickly.
After considering scabbards of various sorts I decided they take up too much of the precious cargo space in the Jeep. While researching fridge slide-outs, I stumbled upon this product.
For $200 I figured I'd give it a try. There is also a $700 one from Grabars that locks, but I just need it as temporary storage while hunting, so the extra $500 for locking wasn't worth it to me.
Installation
The install took me about 45 minutes and most of that time was because the instructions suck and the tiny thumbnail pictures don't help. I ended up with a bunch of extra nuts and for the life of me cannot figure out why they were included.
The top hinges mount to existing rivnuts in the roll bar - you just have to cut a tiny slit to insert the M8 screw through the cover and secure it to the rivnut. Then you clamp the support bracket to the trailing arms of the roll cage with U-bolts. Holding everything in place while doing this solo was a bit tricky, and figuring out the orientation of these clamps took me a while since I had a bunch of extra hardware and as I said, the instructions aren't very good.
Other than figuring out how to orient these clamps, the only other tricky part was making sure everything was level, then holding it in place while tightening down the U-bolts.
One comment about these U-bolts (and the kit in general). It's a genius idea and works really well, but the kit looks like it is put together with very generic hardware that wasn't customized for this specific application. Most of it is riveted together or held with machine screws and nyloc nuts. It has a strong "DIY" vibe to it, but that doesn't really put me off. But if you are an OCD person that spends thousands to have "the best" then this might not be for you.
The one thing I found very disappointing is the plastic spacers and 4" of excess material hanging out the back of the U-bolts. Why not cut them and thread them? I'd pay $25 or $50 more for the kit if it included black hardware that was cut to fit . Now I will probably be threading these the rest of the way and cutting them off, then painting them with black Krylon Fusion paint.
Overall I'm very happy with the way this operates. I installed a set of regular "medium" QuickFist clamps for the stocks and mini Quick Fist clamps for the barrels of two guns and it works like a charm. I will probably replace the nyloc nuts with some wing nuts so that I can easily reconfigure it based on what I want to carry. All my mounting hardware is marine grade stainless, but I may swap it out with nitride coated fasteners to have a darker color.
After a couple of hunting trips and about 2,500 miles driven with it empty, semi-loaded with MOLLE pouches, and fully loaded with 2 long guns and ammo pouches, I discovered that the rack squeaks badly when going over uneven terrain. This appears to be caused by one corner of the rack making direct contact with the rear bar. There is a cut-out, but the clearance is insufficient, so the bar that swings up to support the rear of the shelf is rubbing against the cut-out. I had to wrap it with some Gorilla Tape and after a year thats still doing the trick.