As some of you know, I did quite a bit of work building up my Commander over the summer, and a lot of it was done by test-fitting (and then, at times, helping to re-design) products from 4xGuard that were designed for WKs.
Alas, for all of our successes (Matrix, Side Guard, and Front Guard), there was one swap that just wouldn't quite work: the Rear Guard. Like the other 4xGuard products, it was designed for the Grand Cherokee (WK). But unlike the others, it just doesn’t fit well on the Commander. It’s not that it won’t mount — it will, and I'm pretty sure at least one person here is running with it installed — but it just doesn’t fit the contours of the vehicle to my satisfaction:
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As you can see, the problem is that the back of the Commander apparently tucks in a bit more at the corners than the Grand Cherokee does, resulting in a skidplate that “hangs” out in space far more than it should. The whole thing just looks out of place to me.
I could tell from this experiment, though, that while the Rear Guard didn’t really work, the Commander’s rear end certainly would look better with a little bit of definition. So what to do?
Well, I reused spare parts. My Commander is a Limited, so it came with a small chrome lower fascia piece up front that I replaced with the Front Guard. Since it wasn’t doing anything productive sitting on a shelf, that wee bit of chrome shine got flipped around to the rear, where it mounted very nicely between the frame rails using 4xGuard’s Rear Guard brackets, a drill bit (needed to drill two holes in the fascia), and some spacers that I made out of PVC and painted black. The results:
![Image]()
![Image]()
It's not exactly a "guard" in the sense of protecting much at all, but pictures don't do justice to how sharp it really looks -- cooler than it was up front, I think!
Alas, for all of our successes (Matrix, Side Guard, and Front Guard), there was one swap that just wouldn't quite work: the Rear Guard. Like the other 4xGuard products, it was designed for the Grand Cherokee (WK). But unlike the others, it just doesn’t fit well on the Commander. It’s not that it won’t mount — it will, and I'm pretty sure at least one person here is running with it installed — but it just doesn’t fit the contours of the vehicle to my satisfaction:
As you can see, the problem is that the back of the Commander apparently tucks in a bit more at the corners than the Grand Cherokee does, resulting in a skidplate that “hangs” out in space far more than it should. The whole thing just looks out of place to me.
I could tell from this experiment, though, that while the Rear Guard didn’t really work, the Commander’s rear end certainly would look better with a little bit of definition. So what to do?
Well, I reused spare parts. My Commander is a Limited, so it came with a small chrome lower fascia piece up front that I replaced with the Front Guard. Since it wasn’t doing anything productive sitting on a shelf, that wee bit of chrome shine got flipped around to the rear, where it mounted very nicely between the frame rails using 4xGuard’s Rear Guard brackets, a drill bit (needed to drill two holes in the fascia), and some spacers that I made out of PVC and painted black. The results:
It's not exactly a "guard" in the sense of protecting much at all, but pictures don't do justice to how sharp it really looks -- cooler than it was up front, I think!
I'm sure I'll ultimately get more serious about designing a to-the-corners guard that can take body weight, but in the meantime I wanna look good, you know?
