Thank you, for all the kind words, I much appreciate it. Let me start out by saying, my plan was to never manufacture these doors, although I’m thinking most of the hard work is done, so if there’s enough interest I’ll see what I can put together.
It all started with my first FJ, a 2012 Red TRD model. Absolutely loved the truck, but absolutely hated the fact that the only windows that rolled down were at the two front seats.
I’ve been known to flip cars quickly when not happy with them and honestly nearly did that with my first FJ, because of the window situation. But I found myself constantly making excuses to drive it, even with my three dogs disapproval.
I was getting ready to invest some serious money into a build, going with a long travel suspension and ton of other stuff, but figured if I didn’t fix the window problem I would be wasting my money. Toyota’s motto is “Let’s Go Places”. I can’t agree more, but just want to do it with some fresh air and a couple more windows down along the way!
I decided to hit the Internet and see what my options were out there. After searching like crazy, I couldn’t find anything that would fit my life style of having dogs on board. I found the Freedom Window Company and liked their product, but wanted a more convenient option.
So being the owner of a restoration shop has its advantages. I started studying small access doors with electric windows, like the 2009 Chevy Silverado Extended Cab, 2012 Tundra Extended Cab and 2009 Ford F150 Extended Cab Trucks. After a closer look into those models I decided the F150 Extended Cab was the smallest window glass and nearly the same glass curve line as the FJ’s rear door glass.
I purchased a used set of 09 F150 rear access doors and FJ rear doors from LKQ dismantling. Once at the shop we went to town pulling them apart.
After looking at the inside and shell structure of the FJ doors, I realized we were seriously limited with space for the regulator and power unit. Once we removed the door panel off the door shell of the FJ and removed the glued-in factory glass window you could quickly see that the actual interior window opening was much smaller than the actual window glass itself, which I suspect was for structural integrity purposes.
Being that these access doors serve as the anchoring points for the front driver and front passenger seatbelts I wasn’t willing to move forward with this project unless I could ensure the door-integrity wouldn’t be compromised. With that in mind we moved forward cutting the entire inside door sheet metal away to see how much space we had to work with.
Once that was done we cut back all of the inner sheet metal around the upper window frame. The idea was to leave the original outer frame in place, since my goal was to make this mod look totally original OEM.
We took the power window regulators from the F150 doors and placed them inside the opening to see what we were up against. It turned out the decision to use the F150 doors were the perfect match for window pitch. The F150 regulator glass runners were the exact pitch angle for the FJ rear window glass pitch angle. Thank God!
I took the original factory window glass from the FJ and had a mold made of it, but made it about 6 inches longer. Next I had several fiberglass samples of the glass made to use as a prototype piece that would be easy to cut and shape into our final opening. Since the FJ doors have such a sharp angle around the rear wheels we had to install a metal pillar to allow the glass to drop into our opening. This made for an awkward looking rear window frame, so I went with a small opening that I could glue in a piece of small glass, to give a more eye appealing aesthetic look.
The next couple days were spent framing and boxing in our new structure with steel. I intentionally stayed clear of any of the seat belt system so not to reinvent the factory engineering. The down side to this build is these doors are about 15 to 20 LBS heavier.
Once functional we cleaned up all our welds, did some bodywork and prepped them for paint.
After paint we test fitted the doors and then off to the carbon fiber department. Using the factory door panels we highly modified the underside and made inner changes and some exterior changes to fit the new panels on the modified door interior structure.
Ended up sending the fiberglass prototype windows to an Automotive Window Glass Manufacturing company in Mexico to have a couple sets of glass made using US DOT specs and factory tinted to match OEM Back Glass.
I was able to use FJ front door window glass channel moldings, just had to cut and glue them into place.
Mounted after market electric window switches (found on Ebay) that matched factory switches on the front left dash panel.
So there it is! I do have the molds for the door panels and window glass. I will chat with my employee that did all the metal work and see what we could do to manufacture a pre-made weld-in structure for the electric regulators, which is a factory Ford product and a pre-made weld-in window frame, to cut down on cost.
My spend was high, but I can’t see these being all that much to produce if someone knows a good capable shop to get it done. I’ll seriously think about what my shop could do a set of these for, but we would need the doors for about a week or less.
I would also need to find a good source for manufacturing the glass state side. Again I have all the molds..
Can I please get some ideas on what people would pay for this modification? Keep in mind your factory doors will need to be modified. Having an entirely new door manufactured is not worth the investment, since there’s the liability issue with these doors serving as the anchoring point for the seat belts.
Thanks..
Daryl