Rough Country Gas Tank Skid Plate (07-18 Jeep Wrangler JK 2-Door)

Video Review & Installation

I'm Ryan from extremeterrain.com, and this is my review and installation of the Rough Country Gas Tank Skid Plate, fitting your 2-door, 2007 and up JK. Today, we're gonna talk through the installation of this skid plate, which is a very simple one-out-of-three-wrench install. This is going to bolt directly onto your Jeep without the need to drill or cut anything, so you should be able to get this installed in right around an hour, but we'll talk more about the install in just a second. I'm also gonna talk through the construction and a few of the features of this skid plate.Skid plates offer you a couple of things when you're off-road. One, they offer you, of course, protection in the event that you do get into a situation where you come down hard off of an obstacle where there's that rock or stump that you forgot about, but what they also do is give you confidence to do things that you otherwise might not tackle, knowing that the often soft and unprotected underbelly of your Jeep is not going to become damaged, which will leave you on the trail or keep you from getting home. These skid plates are going to give you confidence so you can have more fun out on the trail without worrying about doing major damage to your Jeep.Now, the gas tank does come from the factory with a skid plate, but that factory skid plate is a little bit flimsy. It doesn't attach in as many locations as this one does. This is going to do a nicer job of protecting your gas tank, which, of course, is one of those areas that you definitely wanna protect. I would say the gas tank is right up there with the oil pan, and then the transmission. These are all important areas that you certainly want to offer a lot of protection to, and oftentimes, that factory skid plate just doesn't give you the protection you're after, and that's where an item like this comes in. This is also going to be significantly less expensive than some of the other gas tank skid plates on the market, and while the other ones might have a slightly beefier bracket to them, I think that this is still going to do an excellent job of protecting your Jeep, and will save you some money for those other mods.This skid plate is made from 3/16-inch steel and it's covered in a textured black powder coat finish. Now, that finish may not hold up very long if you're gonna be dragging the Jeep over the rocks on the trail, however, it is a nice touch. It is going to look good and it's also going to help the skid plate resist rust and corrosion. If you do end up banging this up on the trail, it doesn't hurt to hit it with a little bit of black from a rattle can, which will help to keep it from rusting even after you peel the powder coat off of it.This does have a couple of welded nuts on the inside of these two bracket locations, which is a really nice feature. Of course, you don't have to try and get a wrench in there to hold the nut on the backside. You can just drive your bolt right in, making install a little bit easier. And, as I said, this does install in a couple of additional locations where that factory skid plate doesn't. So, along with being thicker, it has some additional mounting points which are going to give it some additional strength. This does come with all the mounting brackets you need to get it installed, as well as all of the hardware. Along with the factory hardware, you're going to have everything you need to get this bolted up.As I said before, installing this on your two-door is going to be a very simple process. All you need to do is first remove that factory skid plate by removing the couple of bolts that hold it in place. Then, you can hold your new skid plate in location, either with a friend or with some jack stands, and reinstall the bolts that go in those factory spots. After that, it's just a matter of removing a couple of additional bolts that hold the gas tank in place, not the factory gas tank skid but the gas tank itself, installing the brackets that are included with this kit, and finally, using the included hardware to bolt this skid plate to those brackets. Again, those additional brackets are just going to give even more strength and make this even tougher. As I said before, very simple one-out-of-three-wrench install. It can be done in about an hour in your driveway, and you won't need any specialty tools, just your traditional hand tools.As I said before, this skid plate does come in at a little bit less than some of the others on the market. Some of the other skid plates may be from name brands that are known for their armor, they might have a little bit of a beefier bracket that comes along with them, but for me, for my money, at a little under $200, this is still going to do an excellent job of protecting your gas tank. And I've said it before, but it just gets the job done without completely breaking the bank. So, if you're going out on the trail and you wanna protect your gas tank against those little slip-ups that can happen, and you don't feel like that factory gas tank skid plate is going to be enough, this is an easy-to-install and fairly priced option.So, that's my review of the Rough Country Gas Tank Skid Plate, fitting all 2007 and up JKs, that you can find right here at extremeterrain.com.