Getting a handle on things

Since I just bought a Jeep and I'm flipping buh-roke now, I don't have a lot of cash to pimp my ride too much.  I'm piecing things together little by little, and for my first venture I decided to pick up some deep ridged rubber floor mats (possible upcoming beach trip!) and some interior grab handles.  Real quick regarding the mats, I got the Rugged Ridge mats for both front and back.  These guys.  They fall a little short of the accelerator and the sidewalls don't lay evenly against the sidewalls of the floor board (not far off though), but those are my only "complaints".  They're wonderful.  You should get them even if you don't have a Jeep and just look at them.  haha

So the grab handles.  My wife has to climb up into the Jeep and I figured some handles might be nice for her.  So I picked up some Smittybilt JK grab handles.  These guys.  These handles actually bolt onto the frame and looked pretty good from the pics I'd seen.  So I started the installation process.

By the way, first major design flaw (IMHO) discovered in the JK Wrangler:  There are these bolts and holes in the frame by the window that you can use for adding mods - like the aforementioned grab handles.  There is a piece of plastic covering the frame with access holes to get to these bolts.  The problem?  The bolt is about an inch long and there's about an inch and a half to two between the plastic and the frame.  This means you have to be REAL careful getting that bolt out!  If you lose hold of the bolt while trying to take it out - or even harder trying to put it back in, it'll fall between the frame and the plastic into ... I don't know!  A black hole in your Jeep that you'll never be able to access!  (without ripping out the plastic anyway, which is a lot of fuss to loosen and replace one stinking bolt)

This is what the holes in the handles look like:

So I managed to get the frame bolts out without dropping them, AND get the handles bolted on without dropping them either!  Yay!  It only took about 30 minutes of totally freaking out while digging my fingers through these little plastic holes!  After tightening up the last bolt, I gave the handle a little tug to test it out.  And that's when my evening was ruined.

The metal grommet pulled out.  Disaster!!!  You might say to me "Seriously?  This is not the end of the world."  And I'd say you were right, except that I have to remove and then replace all those bolts again!  For reasons I won't go into, I suspect it was easier to get the bolts back in while putting on the handles than it will be to try to get them back in without them.  I knew I was only lucky to have not dropped them into the void during installation, now I have to do it again!?  I'm going to drop them, I know it!  AHHHH!!!!

Anyway, I managed to get them returned and replaced with some velcro-attaching handles.  These guys.  So far so good.

Now to just put those darn bolts back.  Careful...  CAREFUL........

Jeep Wave Count:  0