DIY 60 series 4x4Labs rear swing out bumper in your driveway guide. You got this

[ceylonfj40nut]

Once youve got your frame all prepped you want to go ahead and slide the hook looking pieces with 5 holes in them into the inside of your frame. Align them with the frame rail holes and leave them for now. On the outside of the frame rail you will use the super thick recovery point and these two pieces will sort of Sandwich the frame by using the upper two and the middle bolt holes in the X pattern on the frame.

Use these bolts circled here in red and the washers. There are only 6 of them and they are for the two upper bolts and center bolt on each side.

At first only put the one bolt in towards the front of the truck on each side, use a washer on each side, and finger tighten it. This will hold the inner plate and the fat recovery point in place.

If you notice in this next photo, you have a body mount that is not flat with the frame. For the two rearward bolt holes, use a washer in between the frame and the big recovery piece to TEMPORAIRALY take up this space. When you actually install the bumper you wont use the washers because they will sandwich the frame, but while you are mocking up everything use the washers for spacing. This is super important.

Once you have all 6 of those bolts installed finger tight, go ahead and install the lower two bolts on the frame rail using four of the 6 bolts here

Now you are ready to slide on the large formed main part of the bumper. The Recovery points will slide through the holes on the bumper shell and will locate the shell onto the curved hook looking pieces you bolted to your frame.

From the inside, you should end up with something resembling this.

You can see on the left side there is a pretty large gap. Im almost positive somethign was dropped on my bumper during shipping, but you can try using a spreader clamp if yours is bent like mine was. There is very slight wiggle room with the frame mounts and you can shimmy it all around to get a better fit up with the frame mounts to the actual shell. Get it as close as you can. I kinda screwed this up on mine and its all fixable.


Find a repeatable spot on the wheel well and measure to the bumper shell to ensure the bumper is squared up with the body of your truck. Do this on both sides and make sure its all square. Everyones 60 series will be different and everyones frames will be a little twisted or not twisted or slightly off. This will ensure that your bumper is lined up with the body of YOUR truck.


Its kind of interesting, 4x4labs builds these things in Jigs to ensure accuracy and that each bumper is exactly the same... but the thing is no ones trucks are exactly the same, so in theory The DIY kits can be better fit to your truck than the premade ones.

Next DISCONNECT THE NEGATIVE TERMINAL OF YOUR BATTERY in your truck...



Lightly, and i mean lightly tack the frame brackets to the main shell. Make sure you put the tacks in spots where you can cut them off if you need to. Just enough to hold it together.



With the bumper still attached to your truck, tighten up all the bolts, and then remove the two nuts on the body mount near the rear wheel well of the truck. Mount the short side of the Z bracket on that mount and then put one nut and a washer on it and tighten it tight, but enough where you can just rotate the bracket around. (this next photo isnt mine)

From here you will take your side panels and test fit them. They will go ABOVE the Z bracket and rest on it by the wheel. Put your remaining bolts from the below photo in the holes to hold them in place and use a jack stand under the side wings. Try and line up the rear corner to where you dont have any huge gaps. Mess with the z bracket orientation to make sure the side panels are spaced a little bit off of your trucks body sheet metal, but still line up with the corner of the center bumper section and the side bumper panel. You arent tacking or welding the side wings at this point. you are only making sure that your large center bumper will line up with the wings okay. Check each side, then remove the side wings. If the side wings dont line up, break your tacks and re adjust the center.

On mine I had to space a decent gap out on the corner to make sure it all lined up since my center was slightly bent from shipping. Not the end of the world.

If your side wings lined up okay, go ahead and throw down some hefty tacks on the frame to bumper brackets as well as the recovery points. Make sure its tacked everywhere. Once its tacked. Remove all of your bolts and remove the center bumper assembly and get it on the ground or your welding table.

Before going any further, you want to go ahead and fully weld out the frame bracket and the recovery points. This will help avoid potential warping later... but you still need to watch how you weld now.


To avoid warping only weld one little 4-5 inch section on one side, then one little 4-5 inch section on the other side. Then put the welder down and walk away for a little while. You can come back and weld again once its cooled down enough to touch by hand. This part sucks ass and takes forever but you will thank yourself for it later. Bumpers will and do warp if you put too much heat into them. Ive made this mistake before. Save yourself the headache.


Anyways, get you some good welds down on the inside. You can see the start stops in my welds here. If you weld this whole thing in one go your bumper will be curved from warping.

For the recovery points you want to get a torch and get the thick metal as hot as you can before welding. This will help with weld penetration. Torch it until its super hot, then crank your welder settings up. When you weld these focus the weld into the thicker metal and slightly pause to build the puddle, then swoop down into the thinner metal to tie them together, since your welder settings are cranked up dont pause too long on the sheet metal or you risk blowing through it. The thick metal is very forgiving and will make you feel like a professional welder.

Once you have the entire inside brackets welded up and the recover points welded up (weld inside and outside) let it cool and install back onto the truck with all of the bolts from earlier and tighten them all down. do not use the washers between the recovery point and the frame that you used earlier as shims. From here on out you wont use those anymore.

Awesome work as always! It does take some tweaking, gaps do pop up because frames have tweaks. Overall a great product. Luke is great to work with. I also ordered a DIY kit. Doing a 60 on a 80 chassis, used a 80 DIY kit. A little different. Decided to paint mine instead of powder-coat. Easier to touch up. Something to consider. Used HD Rustoleum satin black.

 

[retroguy7]

Fantastic thread 100% following for a guide to get my rear bumper with dual swing outs done instead of it taking up space in my living room.

 

[dbbowen]

Awesome work as always! It does take some tweaking, gaps do pop up because frames have tweaks. Overall a great product. Luke is great to work with. I also ordered a DIY kit. Doing a 60 on a 80 chassis, used a 80 DIY kit. A little different. Decided to paint mine instead of powder-coat. Easier to touch up. Something to consider. Used HD Rustoleum satin black.

View attachment 3798881

Dang! that is freaking awesome! What a sweet build. I also used rustoleum. I used semigloss black in the larger professional cans because the cans are 50% bigger. Very similar results though! Ive already got the main bumper done and installed on my truck, the thread is just lagging because of christmas and what not

Fantastic thread 100% following for a guide to get my rear bumper with dual swing outs done instead of it taking up space in my living room.

Thanks man! I made enough mistakes to note on here to help people avoid when doing theirs! haha Ideally you can just follow this thread and be good to go!

 

[RevISK]

Great stuff @dbbowen

 

[dbbowen]

Next is the side wings... This is what you should have right now.

Your center section should be fully welded to the inside brackets and the recovery points should be fully welded. Everything is welded inside and outside of the center section... and all of your bolts holding it to the frame need to be tightened down and not left loose. This will be where your bumper will live now.

You should have already installed your Z brackets to your rear body mount and tightened them to where they are tight but can still slightly spin around.

Here you will put one of the 1/2 inch bolts into the Zbracket and through the hole on the wing to hold the wing in place on the side of the truck. Tighten this nut down until its tight but can still slightly move. Then rest a jack stand or something under the wing on the rearward side just to hold it up. The Z bracket will go UNDER the side wing.

This part really helps to have another set of hands to hold, but you want to line up the corner of the wing with the corner of the center section of the bumper and try and minimize the gaps as best you can. You want to either use a finger or a roll of electrical tape or something to stick between the body of your truck by the wheel well and the wing to space it out from the truck.

(I did not do this, and my driver side wing is closer to the truck body than the passenger side wing).

Once you are happy with the fitment on the corner where the two metal sections join, and the space between the truck body and the wing, Tack the corner of the wing to the center section of the bumper in spots where cutting the tacks will be easily accessible just in case.


Repeat this step on the other side.


The thought process is, the bolt in the z bracket will locate the wing and you are just kinda lining it up from there. The z bracket being loose enough to swing around will give you some adjustment... or if you screw this up like I did on mine, you can ovalize the hole on the Z bracket. If you get it right at first you dont have to ovalize the hole haha

Next you will move onto the bent round tubing on top of the wing. This round tubing can go however you like, but if you didnt space the wings perfectly evenly, the round tubing can be spaced in a way that will still make the bumper perfectly spaced from the body of the truck and the bumper will look symmetrical. When you are happy with the positioning, tack this round tubing into place. When you look at the bumper from the side, the top of this round tubing should follow the body line on your truck below the corner light.

On my truck, the wings are slightly off, but since i positioned the round tubing on top of the wings to be perfectly square to my truck body, the bumper looks perfectly symmetrical.

(this photo is a few steps ahead but you can see the body line here).

When you are happy with the way everything is looking... get some really good tacks on the wings. Take the bumper off, and put it on the floor or your table and weld the inside and outside of the wings to the center section and also the round tubing to the tops of the wings. You can stitch weld the round tubing to the wings, but I welded the whole thing on the outside and stitch welded the inside.


REMEMBER. Only weld a little bit at a time and then let it cool or else it will warp!!

Dont be afraid to throw down some ugly boogery looking welds on the outside of the bumper. We are going to be cleaning them up and making them look amazing. You want to build the weld up so the weld is taller than the sheet metal around it. If its got low spots, weld more on top to build it up.

These are the tools you will need to get the best corners on your bumper where you cant even see the weld at all. Dont feel like you need red tools. Green tools, yellow tools, black tools. They all do the same stuff.

You can get the ceramic fiber discs and the holder from harbor freight, they are from the hercules brand. These are an absolute must. The other is just a normal flap disc, and also an orbital sander with 80 grit paper, or a DA sander with 80 grit. Ive found that the orbital sander is gentler


Use the Ceramic fiber discs first. Follow the plane of the metal and keep the disc as flat as humanly possible to the large flat sections of metal. You are looking to get a crisp point. DO NOT GO OVER THE CREASE. Grind the weld down until it is perfectly flat with the metal next to it in one plane, then go to the other plane and do the other side. When you are done you should be left with an almost razor like edge. Do not grind into the surrounding metal. You WILL be able to see it when you paint. Dont even look at a grinding disc or a flap disc in this stage. You are using the Ceramic fiber disc because its super flat. A flap disc will make your metal all wavy and ugly.

Once you have a really sharp edge, attach your flap disc and VERY LIGHTLY start from the flat, grind in one direction long ways parallel with the transition line with one swipe. Then slightly rotate around your corner and do one more swipe in the same direction. Then a little more around the corner with one more swipe. Use absurdly light pressure here, you are trying to get the very rough shape of a rounded corner here. If you press too hard and youll have a flat spot. If you go in multiple directions, your corner wont be perfectly straight anymore.


Once you made a few passes and your corner is ever so slightly less sharp... then use your orbital sander and sit it flat on the metal and pretend you are making a new sharp corner again. Except this time, go to town up and down across the corner to soften it out. The orbital takes off so little metal that you are safe to run it in any direction and go back and forth over the corner. Youre shaping the corner here with this one. You can use good pressure on the flat parts of the metal and blend in your corner grind to the surrounding metal, but back off the pressure when going over the corners or it will eat up your paper. Also run the orbital across the flats of the bumper to remove any slag bbs

What youll be left with are very deliberate corners but the edge will be slightly rounded and pleasant to run your hand across. The main thing is that there wont be any bites from your grinding discs away from the weld joint. It will just look like the metal was formed that way once you get paint on it.

One Last note, Be mindful of how big your weld is on the round metal tubes on the top flat part of the bumper. There will be a metal block that needs to get welded in the flat area between the metal tube and the spindle hole. I had to go back and grind weld out with a carbide burr because i made my welds too fat here. Leave yourself a bunch of room here so you dont have to do that later. or even better, just weld the side of the tube later when you weld the swing arm stop on.

 

[ChubbyHands]

Great write up and thread. Do you have to temporarily support the frame once you remove the crossmember so it doesn't twist of get out of alignment?

 

[dbbowen]

Great write up and thread. Do you have to temporarily support the frame once you remove the crossmember so it doesn't twist of get out of alignment?

I didnt on mine, but i have the oem spare tire crossmember still in there. I didnt notice any movement or anything when i did mine. Id probably say it wouldnt be a good idea to drive it without the crossmember in. But sitting in the garage nothing really moved

 

[dbbowen]

After you have the wings and round tubing fully welded to the center section, and you have your corners all smoothened out and looking all nice, then you will move on to the hitch portion. This part is very easy but theres some key details to not miss.... that I missed.

So you are going to slide the long square tubing in between the frame mounts and measure 3/4 of an inch from the top edge of the frame mount and that is where the top of the cross bar will go. Then measure 7/8 inch from the rear edge and thats where the rear edge will go.

I had it backwards and measured 3/4 of an inch from the bottom and it still works, its just tight getting a wrench in there to tighten the nuts when you install the bumper in the truck.

Tack your cross bar into place and then slide the angled hitch into the hole on the main bumper. You want the upper edge of the hitch to be flat with the upper edge of the cross bar, and you want about 1/4 inch or so of the hitch to be sticking out from the bumper on the other side to give you something to weld onto. Tack this in place as well.


Note, in these photos my crossbar is mounted too low and youll notice that the hitch isnt flat with the cross bar. If the hitch is flat with the cross bar, it will give you a little bit of a gap on the bottom that you do not weld. This is for drainage of water and gunk.

*Disregard the arms and latches (I welded the hook on the left arm on incorrectly. More on this Later), This is to show the stick out of the hitch. Notice its sticking out evenly 1/4 inch all the way around

Lastly, youll weld on the hitch brace. This is also what you will attach your safety chains to if you tow anything with the bumper. You want to but up the 90* section with the hitch and the cross bar and have the short side up at the top of the edge of the hitch, then angle the hitch brace across the cross bar at a downward angle. See photo below

This is looking at the top of the bumper down

Once all of these items are tacked into place, check you can fit a wrench into the area where the nuts will go on the frame mounts, and if youre happy with how everything is looking, fully weld in the crossbar, the hitch, and the hitch brace


Side note, if you are using an 80 cu ft bottle of C25 gas, and a 2 lb spool of wire... This is probably where you will run out of gas and wire. Plan accordingly. Welding gas shops arent usually open on the weekends...

Youll notice soon that everything in my photos will be tig welded. This is because i ran out of gas and it was Saturday, so i couldnt get a refill. I only have one bottle of c25 mig gas, but usually have 2 bottles of argon for tig welding stainless and didnt want to wait till monday to get gas.

 

[dbbowen]

For the spindles, im going to make a standalone post for. I messed these up on mine and im here to make sure you dont do the same on yours.

You "CAN" do the spindles while the bumper is on the floor. Just because you can... doesnt mean you should. My thought was hey ill put it on the floor, level out the bumper, and then do the spindles so they are perfectly upright. Well. The bumper doesnt sit on your truck perfectly level so if you do it this way this is what youll end up with...

Leveling the bumper, not fully level yet

Swing arms swing out and down... because My spindles werent perfectly upright. At least they swing down at the same angle haha

Now.... lets actually do the spindles correctly on your bumper.


Start by fully installing your bumper onto your truck. Bolt all the bolts down tight as if this was the final installation. This will give you the position where your bumper will live life forever.

Next, assemble the spindles. The spindle is machined to fit the races like perfectly. You should not have to beat them in with a seal pusher or anything. If you line them up just right they should just slide into place. The smaller race and bearing goes on top, and the larger race and bearing go in the bottom. Open ends of the races face outward. Youll know which side the bottom is because theres a protusion from one end and the other end is flat. On the bottom, slide the grease seal into place. This one is tricky but it will go into place without hitting it.

Next, slide this whole assembly onto the spindle and tighten down the castle nut so you have a solid unit. Make sure the thick washer is in there as well.

Then use this WHILE THE BUMPER IS ON THE TRUCK to position the spindles. The notch portion of the bottom of the spindle needs to be slightly off of the top of the bumper surface so it doesnt drag as it opens. A good way to keep this gap is to slide a somewhat thin washer under the longer notch portion of the spindle sleeve and rest the spindle assembly onto the bumper on top of the washer.


Next, use right angle magnets to ensure that at least 3 sides of this spindle assembly are perfectly square and are at 90* angles. This is difficult because the bottom of the spindle that goes down into the bumper is cut at an angle, but you can fenangle it around to fully ensure that its square at all of the sides. The magnets will hold the spindle in place for when you tack it. Then i would double check with a speed square or something similar just to be safe.

you can get the magnets dirt cheap at harbor freight. Id use one big one and 2 smaller ones.

https://www.harborfreight.com/welding/welding-accessories-tools/magnets-holders.html

Once you know you have the spindle square and perfectly up and down. Tack the inside of the spindle through the little hi lift hole on the side of the bumper and from the bottom on the inside of the bumper. Get some good tacks going so it will hold. You wont be able to tack it from above.


Do the other side after this. and once they are both tacked in place, remove the castle nut and spindle cover to reveal the spindle and then tack the top of the spindle. Then remove the bumper and fully weld the spindles to the bumper. Again, keep in mind that there will be a stopper that is welded between the round tubing that goes down the wing of the bumper and this spindle and to not make your weld too wide in this section.

The spindles are hefty thick metal. Crank your welder up and also use your torch to heat up the spindles before welding to get better penetration on these. Weld around the top of the spindle and what you can inside of the bumper as well.

Leave the spindle covers and bearings fully assembled at this stage, youll need them assembled to do the swing out arms next.

Sorry for no photos for this section. I didnt do my spindles this way, but if i was to do it again, this is how i would do it. Without the assembled spindle cover, there isnt any place to pull 90* angles from the spindle itself since its machined.

 

[dbbowen]

Swing out arms Part 1-

From here on out everything is going to be tig welded for me, but dont feel like you need to tig any of this stuff. Mig welds are just as good and will be faster and easier to do correctly.

Its been a while since i updated this thread. I welded on the latch hook wrong and had to order a new one and works been pretty busy so i just got around to doing this next part.

Before doing anything, go ahead and weld in the sleeves for your bolt holes on your swing arms. You can do this step later too if you wish but i did them ahead of time. Up to you. From here on out youll notice mine are welded. Also go ahead and weld the little squares to the flat end of the arms. You can tack these for now or just weld them but you want them on there before you do the arms.

Now that you have your spindles on the bumper welded into place on your bumper you will want to fully assemble the bearings and spindle covers. Tighten the castle nut down so the bearings are all seated. At this point the spindle cover should spin a full 360* around the spindle.

You first want to orientate the spindles so the little notch on the bottom of the spindle is facing rearward (away from your truck). Each one. This is important because you will use this to position your swing arm stops here in a few steps.

Here is an image of the notch im talking about and how its facing away from the truck (disregard the arm welded to the spindle cover for now)

Once you have your spindles positioned you have to figure something out. If you place the swing arms on the ground next to each other with the flat sides on the same side and the notch sides on the same side, youll notice the holes are not the same. The arm with the holes FURTHER AWAY FROM THE NOTCHED END is the arm for the TIRE CARRIER. The arm with the holes CLOSER TO THE NOTCHED END is for the OTHER ACCESSORIES (ladder/basket/etc). The holes are positioned like this to get the spare tire more inward so it doesnt stick out past your body line on your truck. I believe up to a 37 inch tire will stay within the body line.

Most folks seem to put the spare tire on the left side. Thats how my swing out bumper on my old 80 series was so im doing it that way. You can put it on the passenger side if you want. Its your truck. Do it how ever you want!

Once you figure out which side you want the tire carrier on (for me i used driver side). Put the arms with the notches onto the spindles. You want an inch of gap between the bumper and the bottom of the arms, so what you can do is find stuff thats exactly 1 inch thick and prop the arms up. If you look closely in the photo below, ive got some sockets that were exactly 1 inch and my speed square shoved in there holding the arms up.

**EDIT, it was pointed out later in this thread that it would be a good idea to add a little bit of height on the end opposite of the spindle on the arm that holds the tire. So for example, i have my arm spaced evenly 1 inch from the bumper to the arm all the way across. On the far end of the arm with the tire, add 1/8 or 1/4 inch more gap to account for any sagging of the arm with your heavy spare tire on it. This way if the arm does sag, youll be covered. I didnt do this on mine and im going to keep an eye on it to see if it sags or not

Next youll want to take a piece of angle iron and put it over both arms and clamp it down. This will lock the arms together both horizontally and vertically and make sure that they are all square to each other. Try to make sure your gaps on the arms to spindle surface are as small as you can get them while making sure the arms are square to each other using the angle iron piece. Ive seen people use just flat steel bar to clamp them together too, but the angle iron works better. In the below photo you can see the Clamped angle Iron

Once you have the arms squared to each other with the angle iron and the arms spaced off the bumper 1 inch and everything looks square. Put some good tacks on the arms. Trust me, if you dont put healthy tacks on these they will fall off as there is a lot of weight far away from the welded joint.


Next you want to weld the little triangle wedges to the bottom of the arms. I clamped a flat piece of steel to the back of my arm and butted the flat of the angle to it and tacked into place. Repeat it for the other side as well.

Once you have both triangle wedges welded tothe bottom of the arms you need to weld the stop to the bumper. This part is very important. In the last step you butted each triangle wedge to a flat piece clamped to the swing arm to ensure they both will hit at the same time. This next part you will need to build some angle into the arms, so when the arms are fully closed and latched down, they are slightly angled in. There are two reasons for this, it clamps down tighter and the gas struts will help hold it closed once its past perfectly flat if that makes any sense.

To do this, you want to clamp up your arms again to make sure they are level and flat. In the photo below you can see the angle iron is on the outer side of the arms locking them together.

Next you want to find a piece of 3/16 steel. Something very flat, it doesnt have to be steel but anything to put between the 2 triangle wedges on the arms and the wide triangle that you are going to weld to the bumper itself to stop the arms. You should have the two swing arm triangles, then the piece of 3/16, then the wide wedge all butted up to each other. When the left to right alignment of the wide wedge is good. Tack this into place and remove the 3/16 and your clamped on angle iron. Close the arms until the small triangles contact the wide triangle and you should see the slightest inward angle on both arms.


Now that you are here, you have a ton of small tacked parts, so go ahead and take the arms off and fully weld everything if it looks good to you. We will do the swing stops next.

Go ahead and grind the welds on the bolt hole sleeves here too. I tried to keep these welds as flat as possible and still needed to grind them down smooth

 

[dbbowen]

Swing arms part 2-

OK now that your swing arms have cooled to the touch next we need to do the latch, swing stops, and antenna mounts.

For the swing stops, There are a few angles to consider. The angles will all be measured with an angle finder like this:

The angle for the arm with your spare tire will be 95*.
The angle for the accessory arm if you plan to use the ladder attachment is 120*. (this arm opens wider so the upper hatch can clear the ladder).
If you dont plan on doing the ladder, you can set the accessory side to 95* but i feel like you should just do 120* just in case you want to do a ladder down the road.

Ok so once you arm is at the proper angle (for this example were doing the tire carrier side at 95*) take one of the little rectangles and place it against the notch on the bottom of the spindle on the side nearest your truck. Try to angle the rectangle to intercept the swing of the notch long ways if that makes any sense.


Remember earlier when i said to watch the weld thickness of your tube on the wing of the bumper? This is why. I had to grind out the weld with a carbide bit to fit the rectangle in there. Also, Since i welded in my spindles a little crooked, i had to shorten the rectangle so it would fit in place. Im leaving my screw ups in here so you folks dont make the same mistakes I did, but also because even if you screw any of this stuff up, its all VERY easy to fix and make work properly. This bumper was designed in a way that someone in the condition i was in at 2am on saturday night could do it very easily hahaha.

Repeat this on the other side (this side i used the 120*)

Once those are tacked in place you can tack in your radio antenna brackets. I tried to position them in a way where if you had an antenna sticking out above them and below them, they wouldnt interfere with the bumper when the arm was fully open or fully closed. Im probably going to use these for lights anyways and not antennas but its still nice to have

Lastly, is the latch. I screwed this up on mine but you can still get the gist of it.

First off, youll want to cut off the bolt holes of the latch. Remove the U bolt from the latch and just cut it off with a cut off wheel.

The way I did this, I set the positioning of the hook first and then the latch. PLEASE NOTE, THE HOOK ON THE DRIVER SIDE ARM IS IN THE WRONG ORIENTATION AND I HAD TO CUT IT OFF AND WELD A NEW ONE ON.

Center the hook portion towards the end of the driver side arm and tack it into place. Then reassemble your Ubolt onto your latch and thread the nuts down so theres about an inch or a little less threads showing past the nuts. Then position the latch on the hook and tack it into place. The thought process here is that you want there to be room to tighten and loosen the nuts to adjust the hook tightness.

This is what the PROPER orientation of the hook should look like. I had to cut my old one off and weld this one on.

Now that you have the latch welded on. Weld everything into place. Once it cools install your latch and tighten the nylock nuts so you get good clamping force on the latch and the arms close and lock in.


Ill do the gas struts in the next post. I need to wait for this paint to dry

 

[Lucky1386]

Looking solid.

 

[TRAIL TAILOR]

Hopefully you adjusted the preload for the 100# tire going on that arm. Otherwise you'll be lifting the arm to close it. Right now looks like you didn't.

 

[tmxmotorsports]

I'm pretty sure the stop is facing the wrong way

 

[TRAIL TAILOR]

I'm pretty sure the stop is facing the wrong way

View attachment 3832000

View attachment 3832001

Yep wrong and will allow the arms to crash into the tailgate.

 

[dbbowen]

Hopefully you adjusted the preload for the 100# tire going on that arm. Otherwise you'll be lifting the arm to close it. Right now looks like you didn't.

The preload for the bearings in the spindle? It was beer thirty when i did my spindles and they are slightly not straight up and down haha thats why they look low like that.

I'm pretty sure the stop is facing the wrong way

View attachment 3832000

View attachment 3832001

Thats how mine is. That pic had the wide stop just sitting on there.

 

[TRAIL TAILOR]

The preload for the bearings in the spindle? It was beer thirty when i did my spindles and they are slightly not straight up and down haha thats why they look low like that.



Thats how mine is. That pic had the wide stop just sitting on there.

No the arm tube needs to be raised at the end to account for the weight load. The 2" tube will sag once weight is applied. I and others usually preload the arm with a 1/8-1/4" rise pending size of tire and tube used.

 

[dbbowen]

No the arm tube needs to be raised at the end to account for the weight load. The 2" tube will sag once weight is applied. I and others usually preload the arm with a 1/8-1/4" rise pending size of tire and tube used.

Huh. I did not know that. Im like halfway through making the tire carrier. Let me see how bad it sags down and i might need to try and figure something out. Ill try reaching out to 4x4labs to see how much they do on theirs

 

[tmxmotorsports]

No the arm tube needs to be raised at the end to account for the weight load. The 2" tube will sag once weight is applied. I and others usually preload the arm with a 1/8-1/4" rise pending size of tire and tube used.

J I can say there isn't any mentioning of this in there instructions some of there instructions are kinda vague I spent more time than I should have been putting the 4x4 labs together on an 80 because of it.

 

[TRAIL TAILOR]

Huh. I did not know that. Im like halfway through making the tire carrier. Let me see how bad it sags down and i might need to try and figure something out. Ill try reaching out to 4x4labs to see how much they do on theirs

They also don't supply a bottom scuff/rest pad so if the arm sags much its metal to metal rubbing and powder/paint is ruined and rust begins.