What To Do with the Bow Sockets

Undecided here - I plan to run my Off Your Rockers rear diamond plate corners on SSDutch, painted white to match.

However - the Jeep still sports the original bow sockets. My options are to cut them off the body so the corners will go on, or cut large slots in the diamond plate to allow the sockets to stick out.

On the one hand, they serve me no purpose - the PO had an antenna mounted in one but it looked hokey.

On the other hand, they're one of those cool "old Jeep" features that always seem to start a "what were those for" kind of discussions with newer Jeep owners.

Thoughts?

 

I am leaving mine on just for the "What is that.." factor. Some of those little brackets are just cool. Since most of my jeep is not original i want to keep what little i can to keep it resembling a 1963 jeep

 

Thought about that, but not sure how easy it would be to weld to diamond plate and have it look good.

I 've yet to fit the corners to SSDutch, on Dutch there was a bit of a gap right in the corner area. Probably due to all the bodywork Dad did.

 

Keep them.......

I for one can see a Dutchco Coleman lantern holder there............

 

Why the body corner plates in the first place Mike, I thought your tub was pretty solid? I've never been a fan of the bolt-on stuff like that, just another place to accumulate moisture and foster rust IMHO.

I took the bow pockets off my flattie, but I really boogered the tub up in the process. It took a LOT of time to make the bed corners look right again, time I could have spend better elsewhere.

I'm with the rest of the guys, If I had it to do over again, I would have left them on there.

 

Off Your Rockers brand corners are 1/8" steel, here's a pic of when I had them on Dutch:



What I meant by the "difficult to weld to" comment was more around the bumpy nature of the diamond plate and how to make something with a flat edge look like it belonged there.

Why steel? 'Cause it's actually protection rather than just bling.

SSDutch is pretty solid, but the passenger side corner has spare tire mount holes and holes from a CB mount that I removed.

The driver's side corner has a crack in the body right by the tailight.

In order to mount the rear-mount gas tank I need to cut a large hole for the gas filler (see pic above). The corner already has the hole and adds support back into that spot.

I went back and forth about running them but there's more work to not run them than to just mount them. I'm terrible at bodywork, and SSDutch will see trail time ( would hate to spend a bunch of time on the corners only to bang em up on the trail).

I'm not concerned about the moisture - with the top edge and bolt holes sealed up and the bottom left open for drainage it'll be fine (or as vulnurable as most of the rest of the Jeep...)

 

Read below...SSDutch isn't that straight. Take as much or more work to not use them as to use them.

And how are steel and steel dissimilar?

 

My brothers '64 retains the sockets. He uses them camping for tent poles, making a dandy shelter over the back of his Jeep, which is usually our "kitchen", using the reciever mounted pack rack he built.
I'd consider carefully notching the corners to fit around them........