Topic: Home Made Swing-out Tire Carrier

[johnyreb69]

Hi, im new at this fabrication thing but i thought someone might find my thing interesting. I wanted a swing-out tire carrier for the 86 4runner, so i set out checking a few out and finally came up with my design. Here is a CAD drawing of my concept, it is centered around a 4x3x3/16 tubing for the bumper and a heavy spindle for the pivot the rest is 2x2x1/8 tubing for the swing arm and such. THe bumper brackets are going to be made out of .25" plate just to keep the mount point hard. The best part is i would in a factory where we design and build heave agro equipment so im getting most of the material free and having a few of the parts cut on the CNC plasma cutter.

[Volcom]

Looks good!  My only suggestion would be to not have the receiver hitch stick out too far out the back.  You don't want to drag that on the rocks.

[Talon84x4]

Nice, I would ad some more strength to the mounts going to the frame. 

[4RnrRick]

Make the tire swing out pivot double shear (will add rigidity to it) and bring the internal stucture of the pivot through the main tube and weld it to the bottom surface for three connection points.

[TRACKER]

that's the same design that i want to do mine ...what are you going to use to hold the swing arm in place ?

[johnyreb69 [OP]]

I was thinking about using angle iron or channel for the frame mount.

[johnyreb69 [OP]]

Make the tire swing out pivot double shear (will add rigidity to it) and bring the internal stucture of the pivot through the main tube and weld it to the bottom surface for three connection points.

The pivot is a spindle kit i bought online, I am also going to weld the spindle on the top and the bottom of the main structure.

[jimbo74]

maybe this is an oversight, but you have the spindle on one end, what is on the otehr end that keeps it from jsut spinning all by itself? some type of latch mechanism? if so, what are yor plans on that? the CAD stuff looks good, if planning to tow, i would also run some extra stingers from the hitch directly back to a frame rail

[johnyreb69 [OP]]

Here is my update... sorry guys i had lost my camera and just found it this morning...

[johnyreb69 [OP]]

I know this is different from my concept but I did not have all my tools. so I had to take a few cuts in the design.

[crawlerdad]

Looks good! Where did you get the hinge and latch. How is it holding up so far? Is there anything you would change? I was worried if I used the original bumper brackets they might not be strong enough.

[johnyreb69 [OP]]

I havent towed anything yet... yes i would add the hard points for the tow chains and some mounts for some D-links but again I had limited resources. The spindle i got from 4x4 rock logic off the net but i went back to see if they still were open and the link was dead. Im sure there are more spindle kits out there I know i will need one again when i make a second gen of this bumper.

[johnyreb69 [OP]]

The original brackets should be strong enough, they are 0.25 inch thick formed steel... smooth curves doesnt seem to have any locations where stress can really build up, i would suggest changing the bolts to new ones at least... the original ones would be old and might be more prove to shearing out if some very heavy loads are added. The bumper does weigh about 75#s all together, I can send you some drawings with dims on it for each part if you would like... well i can try i have solid works 2008 and i wonder if it will save as a PDF.

[unclejpl4x4]

thats mostly what im looking to make but i want the tire on the drivers side  and a fuel can on the right

[crawlerdad]

I saw one that looked like that for everyday use but you could bolt on a separate rack that would have a ice chest rack above the tire and gas or water on each side of the tire.