drnedatsnov

not sure that is just what the rep told me, i thought they were all generic as well, but like i did, sledged them a little and it fits on fine with no rattles.

Rancho

We have several hi-lift jacks here and we found some older ones with different hole-to-hole spacing than our newer ones. Our receipts for the older ones that are different spacing were purchased in 1995. They may be knock-offs, who knows but we are trying to make sure all jacks will fit our tire carrier.

Some people traded up TJs for JKs and keep their old jacks. We wanted to make sure those fit as well.

Rancho

Rancho

First off, we are happy you enjoy the product. It’s unfortunate to hear about the issues. I do know that the finish is covered under our 1 year warranty. We would be more than happy to replace it. Just shoot me a PM and we’ll get you taken care of.
On the rattling, we would like to see some pictures of what you did. If you can PM me with some pics. We are always looking for ways to improve our products and this may be a great solution. We have installed a few here and we could not hear a rattle from the driver’s seat.

Rancho

I do admit it is difficult to install and the reason being to make sure it is a tight assembly for durability and strength. Our thought process is that we would rather have something difficult to install and last a lifetime than something easy to install and last a year or so. There are easier installation options out there, but to be able to sell it at the current price, we decided to go this way.

Slippery

Hats off to the Rancho guys for stepping up and doing all they can. Great bumper for a great price.

My problem with the bumper, just looking at web photos, is the departure angle. It looks as though the bumper sticks out flat a good bit from the rear, and would catch on a lot of rocks/ledges, and really dig on a steep climb. Do you find this to be the case?

Enteric

I was thinking about getting this bumper, but on the vender's site, it said
Note: Max load of bumper is 100lbs. Or something to that nature. With my tire and steel rim and a high lift jack, this is going to be greater than 100lbs. Am I going to get warping or rattling after a while? What is that 100lb limit about? My stock door says max load is 200lbs, and people are reporting hinge and door issues, if this one is 100lbs, I'm sure it will be just more problems. Rancho, can you verify what the load capacity of this bumper is please?

pagoda

Rancho did not do a great job on this bumper at all. Completely ill-fitting parts. Powder coating completely occluding most the places where bolts need to pass through, threaded and un-threaded. Grossly, grossly inadequate instructions.

Why would I have to whack the bushings into the passenger and driver side with a 5 lbs hammer for 15 minutes a side to get them to go in? Then came the issue with putting the brass colored sleeve into the bushings, 15 minutes more whacking with a 5 lb hammer. A press did not work when I tried this, with or without lithium grease as recommended. I should not have had to then grind down the flattened spacer that was mashed from hammering so the bolt and hitch pin could pass.

Then try to put on the 35 inch tire with OEM wheels and guess what does not fit????? Some one at Rancho told me the manufacturer sent wrong something out with the unit. Not even sure he knew what he was talking about. I find that completely unacceptable and in extremely poor quality control on their part and their supposed manufacturer.

Now I need to try and find adapter or relocation bracket which probably wont work since the Rancho tire carrier has a guard of some sort that will prevent relo brackets from being used. Of course they offered to reimburse me for that...but does me no good if there's none that will work.

Rancho you cost me a complete afternoon wasted with a piece of equipment that was absolutely needed for trip starting this weekend.

I understand I get what I pay for (i.e. inexpensive) but I should still have a functional, working, adequately documented product that meets its minimally advertised use.

And yeah I PM'ed Rancho with the issues noted in this rant.

09rubicon

My wife called and mine is here! Gonna go into it with modest expectations and hope for the best. Thanks for all the tips guys, should make install alot easier!


So I installed my Rancho Rock Gear Rear Bumper with tire carrier. I have to say I am very Dissapointed. I am not going into all the details (pm if you want them) so I will just give a quick rundown of the issues I faced.

1. The packaging was horrible, The two main pieces were wrapped in plastic and thrown in oversized boxes. I assume these were the factory orriginals as they were labled Rancho.

2. The instructions were horrible. I am a pretty technical guy and used to working off written instructions, but these were just bad. I have seen 12 year olds that could write them better.

3. The powder coating on the pieces is questionable. There are bare spots on several seems and alot of edges. The powder coatin is also built up to heavily in some of the spots hardware is supposed to pass thru.

4. During install I found that the tubes on both side of the tire carrier meant to accept the bushings were out of round. This may have been due to the poor packaging or just poor construction, not sure. A large round breaker bar and a hammer rounded them back out.

5. The hardware. Now let me explain on this, I am not saying it was missing pieces or wrong sizes, it was straight up crap (i will be replacing it this weekend). The bolts were supposed to be grade 8 I believe, but I highly doubt that. I broke the head off a 3/4in bolt (shank was almost half inch thick!!) with 23 lb/ft of tourqe (craftsman digital 10-100 ft/lb, calibrated march 09). The same 3/4 nut cracked with less torque. I am almost of the belief this is not Rancho's fault and maybe they got a bad shipment of harware seeing as it was all CRAP.

6. As mentionedin a previous post this tire carrier will not accept anything wider than 10.50" on a stock wheel. I let all the air out of my spare, muscled it on and managed to get it back to 25psi.

7. This kit is not compatable with the tow hook on the 09 models, you have to remove it or drill mew holes (I will be doing that too later).

Now for the good. With some quality hardware and a little creativity this has the ability to be a great kit for the money. Keep your expectations reasonable and be prepared to due some modifications and you can have yourself a decent tire carrier. It would also work well as a temporary solution until you can get a higher quality product. I will be upgrading eventually, but this may hold out for the rest of the year with some good hardware.

09rubicon

Bump.........

bigbluejk

that is dissapointing... I was thinking about running this thing for a little while, but I think I will skip it after all this negative posting. It is a shame, because Rancho is NOT known for building junk.