Four years ago, my son, then 10 & I were riding through town on a beautiful summer day in my new to me 2011 JKU, when out of nowhere a bad storm came. 

I had no soft top on, I had no bikini top either, all I had was a mesh sunshade & that, was not going to save my interior nor me electronics from getting wet.  

 

By the time I had found a covered area to pull under, the rain was coming down so hard, the lightning was crashing & the wind was blowing like crazy. 

My son was scared & he was to little to help me get the car cover on.

The wind & the awkwardness of the large cover was making it impossible for me to get it on by myself.

The store clerks let us come in & wait the storm out for 2 hours. 

 

When the storm passed and we were able to drive home, we got in the jeep & it started just fine. 

Sadly, my headlights, my signal lights, my wipers nor any electrical components were working.  

We made it home & I hit up the Jeep forum pages for advice, 

Everyone said, let it dry out. 

 

Three weeks of drying it out between fans on in the garage & in driveway during sunny hot days, nothing.

Still no lights, no windshield wipers, no console or dash lights, no signals, nothing was working.  

We read, researched, asked fellow jeepers what to do & tried everything from changing the clocks spring (2 times) wasn’t it,

we changed signal switches, we changed fuses & still nothing worked.

We exhausted every option spending hundreds of dollars in rial & error trying to find the problem.

Still to no avail, we finally decided took it to a local dealership.

After about 3 days, they found the problem. 

Water got in through the sway bar disconnect button running down the wires to a tiny pinhole in the wiring. 

They replaced all the wiring & my Jeep was as good as new, except for the stereo, it was fried. 

That was an additional expense I had to replace later. 

 

*Jeep wiring & electrical components are NOT 100% waterproof 

 

THIS WAS A VERY COSTLY FIX!!

A cost that myself & most people just can’t afford,  there had to be a better solution.

 

I started drawing sketches keeping my idea to myself for three years, as I did not know how to sew &

I didn’t want somebody to steal my idea, so it sat on the back burner. 

 

3 years later:

My mom had been living in Canada for the last 13 years & the last 5 of those years she was on a trial immunotherapy drug for stage four lung cancer.  

Early last year, her cancer doctors told her the therapy was no longer working, the cancer was growing larger & spreading. 

They took her off the trial at almost the 5 years mark from when she started. 

They gave her the option to take chemo with only a 20% success rate & with no hesitation, she said no way. 

She was not going to be sick from chemo with what little time it was going to give her.  

She wanted to live the rest of her life as long as she could as healthy & happy as possible with her family in North Carolina.   

A month later she was down here & living with us.  

 

We took doors off & top off & were out riding around when it started to drizzle.  

I pulled out cling wrap & duct tape to start wrapping everything up. 

My mom said, surly there is a nicer more durable & easier solution.

Now, Imagine what that looks like, with plastic wrap & duct tape on your sexy Jeep dash going down the road with no doors.

It doesn’t look very sexy or nice.  Plus, the duct tape glue is a pain to get off. 

I had a great idea & I had to show her my sketches. 

 

A soon as I showed her my idea, she knew I was onto something big & she wanted to start right away. 

 

My mother went to a local store & bought an $80 sewing machine & a really ugly plastic picnic table cloth.

The first prototype was made. 

From there, over a couple months, many different types of materials & lots of long long hours we finally had the final prototype.

IT WORKED!!