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I had checked the clearance btw my drive shaft and steel gas tank shield before I left for the Texas Spur Jeep Jamboree. A couple of inches and no rub marks noted so I should be in great shape!.

So when I did a post off road inspection I was very surprised to see that the drive line had somehow rubbed and I believe pulled part of the steel shield down ???

I didn’t know that could happen.

At first I thought perhaps I had hit something under the gas tank that caused it to bend.

Matt sent me a link to, how he trimmed his shield ( thanks), and even after that I would have just assumed that it would just help prevent rubbing, not what happened to me. The steel is not super heavy duty, but it is not thin either.

At first I thought I would just bend it back up… Not… Then I started to see how hard it would be to remove the shield and bend it back up. Never got to the point of totally figuring out how to remove it and while I was still thinking that way, I realized even if I should get it back in place, it would only happen again.

So it looks like I will be cutting this section out.

You can see in the photos that the drive shaft has also just barely scraped the gas tank itself even after the shield was pulled down.
Strange to me ??

Has anyone else experienced this ?

I didn’t know there could be that much movement back there!



This area is supposed to be FLAT all the way.










Strange…






















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