New Double Shear Tire Carrier Hinge - no more breaking spindles!

One of our top selling items is the Tire Carrier Hinge Kit for fabricators building tire carriers etc. We offer these kits in a 1000 lb. rated version and a 2000 lb. Heavy Duty version.

We've heard over the years that a lot of people who are not using our sleeve snap the 1000 lb. spindles in half. We provided a remedy for this by adding a slip fit sleeve that gets welded into the bumper. This provides additional support to the spindle. The spindle is then held by a roll pin through the sleeve to set the correct height when building your tire carrier. When finished we recommend tack welding the spindle to the sleeve. By not fully welding it in, it makes it easy to remove if it ever fails. It also keeps it strong instead of weakening it through a hot weld.

However, some customers are putting a lot of weight on these tire carriers through carrying over a 35" tire, Gerry cans, Hi-lift jack, cooler, etc. Your carrier may be fine with all this extra weight unless you have an un-sturdy tire carrier with movement.

This is why we offer Frame Tie-in Brackets on our website HERE.

Jeep Wranglers have a very thin cross member that twists and bends very easily with the addition of aftermarket bumpers and tire carriers. These brackets bolt your bumper directly to the frame. This makes it much safer for towing as well as eliminating any movement that your tire carrier may have had. As long as your carrier latch is setup snugly, you should have a very stout setup without any movement.

For all the non-Jeep Wrangler owners, you should conduct the same test to see if you have any movement within your setup. You should be able to firmly push and pull on the top of the carrier and see very little to no movement.

You may need to shim the carrier against the body of your vehicle with a light pre-load to achieve this. By eliminating this movement within the carrier, it will not multiply the stress on the hinge every time you hit a bump. It’s that stress multiplication on the spindle that causes it to fail, not its 'sitting' weight.

If you still have too much weight and are worried your spindle will fail, you might need to upgrade to the 1,750 lb. tire carrier hinge kit - available HERE.

This is intended for people using a bumper width of three (3) inches or wider. We understand that a lot of you are using a 2" wide bumper and that this is not an option, for this reason we are fabricating a new kit!

It will use the 1000lb. Hinge Kit but will be a double shear design. The double shear bracket will be a weld on design that will be incredibly easy to install. This bracket will eliminate any movement at the top of the spindle.

We will keep you updated on this as were sure it will be our next top selling item. This item will launch at the end of November 2009.

Machining

For those fabricators that are seeking hard to find parts, parts that don’t currently exist, or someone to produce them, take a look at www.alloymachine.com

Alloy Machine Shop, inc. is our brother company that is a full service machine shop including precision CNC machines. This is where all of Comp4x4’s machining takes place. For example, the tire carrier spindle assemblies are a constant project we have them doing.

You may also want to try them for spacers, couplers, tabs, etc. If you are seeking a machine shop, they will do you right.

Here's Your Free Stuff

After hundreds of hours of web design, we now have the FREE CONTEST GIVEAWAY section up on our site now. You can go to the home page at www.comp4x4.com and click the link to enter, or here is the direct link: http://www.comp4x4.com/contest.html

As we noted before, it is free to enter and free to win. You don’t need to pick it up either; we will mail it out for free as well.

When you go to the page, just read the steps, fill out the form, submit it, and your good to go. We will be choosing a winner in early December so it will get to a lucky somebody before Christmas.

There are a few questions on the form that are just for fun. If you don’t want to answer them, they are not required. However, I feel it is very important and relevant information. We need to know who you would rather fight out of Kanye West and Boy George, or who would at least win between the two.

Besides building Jeep parts, sharpening my ninja skills, and bench pressing ‘little people’, I am also a huge MMA (Mixed Martial Arts, ie. UFC, WEC, K-1 etc.) fan. So if you happen to guess who my favorite MMA fan is and why, you might just secure yourself the win... unless somebody has a huge heart throb story of why they need to win. I cant imagine why on this product though.

Now go and enter already.

Wheres my free stuff?

I know I have been promising some free giveaways for about two months now and I am behind schedule in getting it on the site. I apologize for my tardiness in posting.

We have decided that we will give away our number one best selling item: The 1000lb. Tire carrier hinge kit. You can view it at: http://www.comp4x4.com/tire_carrier_hinge_kit_1000.html

I may through some other surprises in there as well like stickers and other paraphernalia.
I would like to do free giveaways ever few months off our site. I will try to make them interesting and relevant. Also, if it’s something you can’t use, register anyways! We’ll give you a free credit (the new purchase price of the product) towards something you can use!

I will put a link up to the main page on our site of where you can go to register. Remember, registration is free. Free + free = free.

Who am I?

Welcome to the brand new blog The 4x4 Fabricator and Off Road Industry. The purpose for setting up this blog is to provide not only the customers of www.comp4x4.com but all those in the industry that wish to keep up to date on new products, techniques, and money saving methods to keep your vehicles on the trail etc.

My name is Ryan Schoenrock and I will be the main writer for this blog. I would like to hear feedback, ideas, and additional insight from all those who read and wish to contribute to the blog.

So who the heck am I and why should you listen? I am the co-owner of Competition 4x4 and Racing, inc. as well as Alloy Machine Shop, inc. I’ll be the first to say I’m not Albert Einstein, but I feel that I have relevant knowledge to communicate to the community and hopefully help some readers out.

I have been in the off road industry for over seven years. Over that time I have been a metal fabricator and designer of our new products. We have a strong following of Jeep owners and many of our products are catered to them; however, we are involved and work on all 4x4’s.

For a little over 10 years I have been involved in the manufacturing industry in regards to CNC machining etc. This is an area of focus that I am looking to expand and introduce new CNC machines in the near future that will give us added capabilities in what we can produce and at a lower cost to you.
As for education, I have a Bachelors Degree in Business Management and I am a current graduate student obtaining my MBA (Masters of Business Administration) with a certificate in Finance and International Business.
Okay, enough about me, this blog is intended for products and where this industry and company is going.