And that's the million dollar question. How much tire/lift take to kill them? Assuming there's no physical damage from wheeling, is it because larger tires have a bigger contact area? If so, what's the limit? Then, what is more damaging, turning without moving on pavement or wheeling on a trail? Does the extra weight of a winch and bumper just add to the misery or was it just designed heavy enough for the Ford winch and 35's? Kinda disappointing they aren't putting the heavier racks on BLs or offering it as an option on anything non WT. If mine wasn't going to be resold at some point, I'd put the 3.0 rack on and go up to 37's. Less than 5% of my total driving is off-road but I feel like it's becoming clear most of the rack failures are on 37's. If you don't upgrade, you're probably operating on the far edge, mechanically speaking, with the stock rack.
That is what the Ford tech told me as well. He stated that Ford is relating it to the 37s. I do have a front diff drop bracket so my CV axles angles are back to stock. I am surprised that my 37s would do this though. But are you saying that having the Fabtech tie rods could have had a part of the motor failure because all the extra stress that the stock tie rods were supposed to absorb transferred to the motor? I mean, it makes sense.
Yeah, I live in Colorado and basically hit the trails every weekend so I am definitely adding the extra stress of 37s, a bumper, winch, aftermarket tie rods to the equation to what probably made my BL steering rack fail. But Ford should assume that customers are going to upgrade and go bigger, just like Jeep and Toyota does, so they should make stronger parts. I assume though that we are their guinea pigs and that they expect us to break things so that they make stronger parts for the next generation of Bronco's.
Motors have thermal protection built in, should shut down in an overheat situation, but work again when cooled down. Don't think there is a pinpoint test to isolate just a motor failure anyway...could be just about any failure inside the rack. Thats a big part of what we are trying to overcome in this thread...upgrade the rack!
I want to upgrade the rack to the Hoss 3.0 but just breezing through the 80+ pages I keep getting an idea it's not as easy as just a one-to-one swap. Or is it (with a little recoding)??
Not to make the wait any more miserable but I looked up what I think is the correct rack for your BL and indeed, on backorder. The kick in the jimmy is there are 30 other total orders in there with you and looks like 17 inbound to the packager. Not sure where you fall in that group but about half of those are still going to have a long wait until another batch goes out. Looks like the problem is the supplier, not Ford. There is another rack for the BL but it is separated by build date of before or after 5/17/22.
What orientation 1,3,6,12 was the wear at when you removed?Well the bushing is a wear item, here is my HOSS 3.0 rack with 2,500 miles on it with only 1,000 miles with 37s and it has tell tale sign of wear. I have convinced myself that I need a spare rack, just to many variables to account for and my right foot. I am not fear mongering people into buying parts, just this is a wear item/future ford recall.
Wow, thank you for providing that information. Mine was delivered to me on 2/1/21, so maybe the other rack is for my BL. My service tech told me he put the order in as a rush emergency (or something to that effect). Not sure if that is even a realistic category when ordering parts. Does my dealership have the ability to see if other dealerships nationwide has the part in stock?
Once programmed, it's bolt on, align, done...need help w/the programming part? plenty of us here can help ya. @mpeugeot has drop shipped preprogrammed racks to other members...I would have no issue doing that as well now that I have a system worked out. Ask your dealership if you provided a Hoss 3.0 rack preprogrammed and ready to install if they would still cover the labor. There is no difference in the physical install (not much at least...the 3.0 is a little beefier, so you gotta wiggle it in there just right). They will likely say no, but that's for administrative reasons...the claim will bounce if there is not a correct causal part billed. A crafty service mgr could find a way around this...but might just plain not want to.
They call it vehicle off road and they probably opened a part escalation request. They can go on on dealer locator and see who has one but most that show one in stock are ordered for one of their customers but not charged on a shop order yet OR they know it's on BO and won't let it go.
This is why I want a spare, its the long drawn out shit show to rolling again. I was down for 2-3 weeks, 1 week was just trying to buy a steering rack.
