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.
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