Looks sharp now, but still disappointing.

I am going to see about a ratchet strap do avoid such issues should they arise.

 

I'm sure you have a much higher quality hinge than I did.

 

Last weekend I retired the use of my rear spare tire rack. I have removed it each year for a few months during winter to reduce weight during ice racing season, as well as improve visibility to the rear when it's not 4 wheeling season. But this time, I've retired the use of that rack for good. I've been concerned for quite a while about the longevity of that hinge.

I've just ratcheted down my spare in the cargo area.

My hinge didn't fail like the other 2 failures I've heard about so far. But when I took it apart, I did notice that just the upper bearing race was cracked like Steve's was. The lower one was still OK on mine.

I'll be getting a different hinge in the next several months (totally different design hinge, that is).

 

I pulled my apart after Steve Schaefer's failed, and I must say, my hinge is in perfect condition. The bearings, the races, the hinge, everything is still straight. Could it be the design of the bumper, and the way the tire is mounted in reference to the hinge? When I built my bumper, I mounted the tire closer to the hinge, to keep the leveraging force to a minimum. Just recently, I built the off-road addition to my tire carrier, to move the tire up higher, but even with this, the bearings and races are still in good shape.

As well, to ensure that weight was distributed across both bearings and races, I added a brace to the bottom of my arm extension, that is welded down the side of the hinge body. This distributes the weight across the entire body of the both bearings.

Seems to be working quite well.

 

Got pics of these additions or are they on the website?

 

Click on the pics for larger images. The website is at the bottom.


Look closely at the hinge, and how the arm has extra bracing under it, tied to the hinge.







REAR BUMPER BUILD WEBSITE

 

My beam covered the entire hinge. Obviously used both bearings, both were cracked.



I think the fact that I was able to tighen up the mount so much and had the least ammount of free play accelerated the death of the hinge.

Since I cut everything for the carrier off, I'll just leave it or make another bumper from scratch.

 

You need to make something new since you will need someplace to mount that FJ-40 license plate holder.

Sorry to hear about the hinge issues Steve.

 

Hey yeah, wanna sell that nice FJ license plate holder....

 

I've seena broken RS spindle as well, the guy snapped it after going over a speed bump in a parking lot, of all places.

My old bumper/tire carrier used a 1" bolt as the pivot point and never had a problem with it snapping or bending. My new carrier will use a pair of 1/2" bolts in double shear as pivots.

 

That's how my rear carrier is built, two 3/4" (i believe) bolts in double shear with poly bushings about a foot apart. Bomb-proof. I'm not surprised those trailer spindles are breaking, there's a lot more force exerted on that little stub than you might think. While you may have 150lbs or more of static weight, the rate of acceleration from hitting a speed bump or jumping a dune can increase that exponentially.

 

Shane or 4 Crawler:

Do you have pics of your set-up you can post or send me?

 

Here's a mock-up of mine:



The red lines show the location of the side supports.

 

I'll post up a pic in a bit, just got back with lunch. It's pretty close to Roger's.

Here ya go, the last 4 are the shots you want.
http://4-low.com/temp/stout_bumper_pics/