We finally got it done before the AZ run...

"HERE are the pics I took this past weekend of our tire carrier fab.

As you can see, Keith did all the manly work and I did all the grinding and bitch work

It's an awesome carrier... I'm really happy with it. We did discover a minor design flaw at the end... because the pivot point for the swing is 8 or 10" in from the edge of the truck and because I wanted the tire in close to the liftgate when closed (we even put in a ~15 degree forward slant to the tire mount to keep it snug with the body), the edge of the tire doesn't ever completely get clear of the path of the liftgate. It'll close when the swing is all the way out - but just baaarely. I think I can correct it for the time being by spacing the tire out a bit and by reducing the lean a bit... but ultimately we may end up doing a bit of rework on the arm.

Oh - we decided to just keep the trailer hitch thing that Barry made rather than trying to incorporate a new hitch into the bumper. We made a notch in the bottom of the bumper that the hitch should peek through (it'll pretty much look like it's got an attached hitch).

I took it back off the truck this morning and I'll be doing a lot of grinding and painting over the next week or two... I'll put up some "done" pics when it's all back together and pretty (I'm going to use the same paint I used on the stupid swamper wheels... metallic dark gray wheel paint.





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Looks good maan!

So much work hidden by its stock appearance. Muchos coolishness! Lots of pics, too.

Nice work!

Looks good.

That thing is AWESOME...

Simple efficient design, I love it.

No Frame stiffners in the back though?

Frame stifiners? The stock ones are in place. The frame mounts are 3/8" thick steel and there is a piece of 1 1/2" tube between them. The bumper plate is 3/16". If his truck is near a nuclear blast the bumper will survive.

Gotcha, I can see them now in the pic of the rear frame where it's open... I must have missed that pic!

Anyways, like I said, lookes great!

Damn spiffy!, I really like the way you scored, then heated and bent the plate to form the bumper.

very nicely done.

It looks good, but I would add some gusseting that goes from the vertical bar all the way to the mounting plate for the wheel. The first tire carrier I made was similar to that one. I did a night run and came out the next morning to find out that I lost my spare. The 1/4" plate it was welded to tore leaving only the center section. The rest of the plate was still bolted to my spare somewhere.

purtty

I think you hit your max bandwidth limit on the pictures.

I cant seem ot see the pictures

I don't think glenard would let me add any gusseting. He is anal about the painting and that has been done. It should be okay, we use 3/8" plat for the tire mounting and my welds are sound, though the 2" x 2" tube is only 1/8" thick.

The Site is down.


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