Safari Tube doors

In the last few years, one of the hottest new products to come out for the Jeep has been the safari door.  For those of you that like the feeling of running with the factory doors off but want something to rest your arm on, the tube door is an excellent addition to your Jeep.   The problem we had with the doors that are available is the price.  Lets face facts.  Although lots of us Jeepers have a welder and a way to cut and put holes in metal, most of us don’t own a good tube bende. The companies out there that make these doors know this.  That is why some of the tube doors on the market are running prices of nearly $350 per pair!  There just isn’t all that much to a tube door and the cost of the tube is minimal, you’re paying for those nice bends!

Here at nwjeepn.com are lucky enough to have a JD Squared Model 3 tube bender in our shop, which does a great job of bending tube, but if you don’t have access to one of these don’t worry.  You can purchase safari door kits from  Jeep Tubes.com (www.jeeptubes.com).  Jeep Tubes provides the tube pre-bent and left long for you to customize.  You will still need a way to notch the tubes, either a tube notcher or a hole saw mounted in your drill press will do.  These kits are perfect for the home fabricator who has everything but a tube bender in their shop.

To make our tube doors, the first thing we did was take a lot of measurements; height, width, length of door opening, angle of door jam, and the distance between the hinges. After coming up with a general idea of what we wanted, we drew it full scale on a  piece of MDF we had lying around that still had a couple of good straight edges that we could use to help line things up.

Once we were happy with the layout, we transferred our measurements to a length of 1.25 x .120 tubing then started bending.  For the upper bars, we tried it two different ways: the first was one continous tube with opposing 45 degree bends (top door picture at right). It looked good but we were limited by the bender as to how close together we could get the bends and we had to be very careful to keep everything level so that both bends would be on the same plane. Not an easy task.

Since the door would require some bracing to be strong enough anyway, we decided to make the top bar two piece with one 45 degree bend, tying in to the lower bar about midway and adding a straight tube for the remainder of the top bar.  It turned out to be very strong as well as easier to build and based on the feedback we’ve received so far, a very attractive design as well. (lower picture at right)

After spot welding the door together, we had to come up with a hinge design. Having looked at a number of other tube doors, we were a little disappointed with the “clunkiness” of the hinges. Between large plates welded from top to bottom to mount factory style hinges and pinched tube with bolt-on hinge pins, there just didn’t seem to be anything that would blend with the clean lines of the door that we had established up to this point. 

We decided to put our metal lathe to use and turned our own hinge pins using measurements taken from the factory hinges.  These pins were then welded to a tab of  1 ¼” x 1 ½” x 1/8” flatbar.   For those that don't have access to a lathe the alternate method for making a hinge is to use a 5/8” tube with an inside diameter of 3/8” welded to the same 1 ¼” x 1 ½” x 1/8” tab with a 3/8” bolt through it for a hinge pin.

The hinges are then mounted on the Jeep and the tabs rotated against the door opening. The forward ends of the tube doors are then cut at a 45 degree angle to line up with the hinge tabs.  Holding the doors in the opening we placed the tubes against the hinge tabs and tack welded them in place.  An extra set of hands as well as a good welding blanket come in very handy for this.  Once we were happy with the fit of the hinges we removed the doors to finish up the welds on the bench.

Then we moved on to the latch.  We had looked into several ideas but decided on the cheap and easy method.  We picked up a pair of simple gate latches at the hardware store and brought them home.  We also bought a pair of tensioning springs to keep the latch bale from rattling on the inevitable washboard roads.

To install the latches it was first necessary to cut the mounting flange off  the latch body as it would hold the latch too far away from the door and get in the way.  We also cut the rivet holding the bale in the latch as we planned on adding the tension spring in there when we were done, a machine screw would eventually replace the brass rivet.  A metal plate needs to be welded in the upper rear corner of the doors adjacent to the catch on the door frame of the Jeep.  Once the plate is in place you can put the latch in place against the catch and push the door closed against it to hold it in place for spot welding.  A bungy cord hooked to the door and run across the jeep to the opposite door catch is a good way to hold everything in place while you tack weld the latch body.  Once we were happy with the positioning of the latch we finished our welds on the bench.

The tensioning spring was cut down a bit for our situation and then one end of it was welded to the latch bale.  This will insure that the latch cannot inadvertently open due to rattling down the road and it will keep it quiet as well.  Make sure you weld it on in the correct direction or the spring won't work.

Just one thing left to do.

Since the factory mirrors stay with the factory doors it is necessary to add a way to mount a mirror on at least your driver side door.  You can either use an aftermarket mirror re-location bracket set sold for about $35.  Or, you can add a piece of tube of the correct inner diameter to attach a mirror to your tube door.  I have always used an old motorcycle mirror with the threaded end lengthend with a piece of all-thread rod welded to it and inserted in the factory hinge on the Jeep when I removed my doors.  For this reason I just attached a piece of the 5/8”OD, 3/8” ID tube to the upper hinge body on the driver side door to mount the motorcycle mirror.

A trip to the powder coat shop and the doors were done. Total cost for the doors including powder coating was around $110.  Although you can find doors out there for around $175 there is a satisfaction in making something yourself.