The Bestop Two-Piece Soft Doors keep the cab nice and toasty even on chilly mornings.

We’ve been running around in our Project Jeep JK with the Bestop Trektop now for about six months. We’ve love the ability to roll the top back or completely remove it, quickly and easily, while on the trail. We also like the weight savings it offers and the fast-back design that keeps us from hard top damage woes. While this was a welcome change from our hard top, we still felt as if we were missing something … or was it that we had too much of something? Yes, that too much of something was our factory metal doors… ehk! We’re not saying the full metal doors are a bad thing, but who wants them in the summertime? 

Soft top and doors were standard issue on Jeeps once.

Anyone who has been Jeepin’ for a few years knows the joy and enhancement of driving a Jeep with the doors off.  Whether it’s street cruising or hard-core rock crawling, removing the doors changes the whole experience and perspective. Back in the “old days,” you could only buy a Jeep with a soft top and soft doors, and we feel that every Jeep today should still be offered with this setup. Bestop came to our rescue, once again, with an excellent product that we were in dire need of. Its new Two-Piece Soft Doors for the JK Wrangler might just be our new favorite upgrade!

So, you’re out on the trail with your Jeeps doors off and a summer rain storm moves in quickly! What do you do? One option is to deal with it and get soaking wet and covered in mud! Sounds interesting … but no thanks. Surely, you wouldn’t have your huge, bulky steel doors with you in the back of the Jeep to quickly put on. Not us! We’ve seen Jeeps parked under trees during storms. How exciting! Not. There is one option that will leave you clean and dry as you continue navigate the trail: lightweight soft doors. 

We recently drove to a trail in the morning with our doors off, which took about an hour.  It was a nice, scenic drive, except for the fact that it was only 49 degrees Fahrenheit, and it only got colder as we climbed in altitude. The JK’s heater works well but not well enough to warm passengers up when the doors are removed, especially when traveling at 65 mph.

We got to the trail and were pretty miserable but quickly forgot about it as the sun started to warm things up. We put our “doorless” morning adventure in the past … that is, until one of our back seat passengers nearly fell out of the Jeep on an extremely off camber section of a rocky trail. It wasn’t long after this trip that we were on the phone with Bestop discussing their new two-piece soft doors.

The factory doors are nice but are also heavy, bulky and hinder vision on the trail.

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We've had a number of comments on and off the trail about the Bestop soft doors.

The Two-Piece Soft Doors from Bestop are what every Jeep owner needs. They protect you from the elements, yet are very easy to remove and store in the cargo area of the Jeep, taking up very little space when you don’t need them on. We’ve found that by just removing the upper half doors, we can still see the trail and also have added a barrier for unsuspecting passengers who don’t pay attention to the pitching of the Jeep while on- or off-road. The versatility for a four-door JK is filled with endless door combinations too:  take all the doors off completely; run just lower half doors; run no doors in front and full doors in rear, and so on. The beauty of it all is that you can make these decisions on the trail and adapt to changing conditions as needed. You just can’t do that with the full factory metal doors.

The door options are endless, depending upon your needs for the day.

Much like the Trektop (which reduced some of the vehicle’s weight), we appreciate having less weight up above the chassis line by removing the bulky factory doors. This is noticeable and has probably saved us more than once from introducing our paint to the ground.

We were sure that the soft doors would only shelter us from the sun and the cold. We’ve run factory soft upper doors on our YJ’s in the past and have never been impressed with the way they keep rain out. While the Bestop doors are not impervious to a few stray drops of water entering the interior, they do keep water out better than any other form of soft door we’ve ever used. In the heaviest rain storms, we may get three or four drops of water that sneak past the thick rubber moldings, and that’s mostly due to wind. Not bad in our book.

Another concern we had was door latches. Aftermarket door latches tend to dislike a Jeep’s striker area. We’ve even seen doors suddenly unlatch and open while driving. Not these latches! Bestop has designed its soft door to keep the doors shut. Even when applying one’s full body weight to the door, the latch holds. This is an extremely important safety issue that Bestop has not overlooked.

We had no mishaps with these latches.

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The Bestop doors look and function great on the trail or at home.

If you want an extremely quiet Jeep, you’re better off sticking to your hard top and steel doors. The Bestop Soft Doors are designed for the Jeeper that understands that you are making some tradeoffs. Yes, you can hear some road and engine noise with these doors.  Sure, you get a little flapping of the fabric against the steel skeleton door frames.  However, the soft doors are likely not your daily driving choice, and they can swap out for the factory units in minutes for days on the trail. Put them on for the weekend and enjoy the versatility that they offer. When it’s back to work for the week, pop your factory doors back on and you’re ready to go. Once you have them on though, the look and functionality of them will have you thinking about leaving them on year round.  Since we installed the Bestop doors, we haven’t touched our factory doors since! They look that good and we get more positive feedback on the soft doors than any other part of the Jeep. 

The doors will fit the Bestop Trektop, factory soft top and the factory hard top, and in two- or four-door setups. Installation is nothing more than bolting on and adjusting your latches, and then slipping the doors into the factory hinges on the Jeep. That’s it. In about 20 minutes you’re on the road.

The TJ mirrors are the perfect fit for this setup.

Note: Most State laws require the use of at least one side-view mirror. When we picked up our set of Bestop Two Piece Soft Doors, the replacement mirrors were still on the design table for the JK. Bestop stepped up quickly though and hooked us up with a set of TJ mirrors that installed with nothing more than three screws per side. They look and work great!

CONTACT
Bestop
P.O. Box 307
Broomfield, CO 80038 U.S.A.
www.bestop.com
Toll Free: (800) 845-3567 (U.S. and Canada)
Main: (303) 465-1755 (International)