Thanks, I'd think that should be mandatory for anyone mounting a 37" wheel back there.
Yup. Ford Performance p/n M-19007-BRS gets you the whole kit
I'm glad you pointed-out the two, completely different instances in the "life of a gate"... Open v/s closed. The first half of the thread seemed to only be addressing the open scenario which, is the least critical, static portion of it's existence. Now... to see how this story ends!I think you guys have it well covered.
And no, reinforcing the gate itself certainly doesn't take load off of the hinges. Due to changing the stiffness of the gate it may slightly alter the load distribution between the top and bottom hinges but that would be a small/secondary effect.
The most significant loading case is heavy off-roading with your gate closed (hopefully). Loads here go into the gate itself and then into the hinges and latch (lateral torques and fore-aft forces). With the gate open the latch is obviously unloaded and the hinges are more heavily loaded (relatively) but there are no large dynamic driving loads (g forces on the spare from driving).
Ford obviously felt that one needed to upgrade both the gate itself and the hinges for the larger/heavier 37" wheel.
I think, simply from a few videos I've seen, that for non Raptors the gate itself is more of the weak link during severe driving load cases.
If I were upgrading I would follow Fords lead.
Now that I have 33k of hard on and off road miles (I'm off-road 5 days a week, I drive like batman on roadI'm glad you pointed-out the two, completely different instances in the "life of a gate"... Open v/s closed. The first half of the thread seemed to only be addressing the open scenario which, is the least critical, static portion of it's existence. Now... to see how this story ends!
), my tailgate is not closing as smooth as it once did - a bit of sag I assume causing the meetup between the gate and the latch to be rougher then it used to be. I don't have any mods on my gate, though my Mickey Thomson's(spare) is at least 10lbs more then OEM Goodyear's.
Oh well.Those poor hinges
After. But I think it was more to do with not properly tightening them.
You can just realign the striker plate and probably be ok to be honest.Now that I have 33k of hard on and off road miles (I'm off-road 5 days a week, I drive like batman on road
Question is would the Raptor OEM reinforcement from Ford Performance (cheaper elsewhere) be an improvement? Some of the thoughts here about the design and physics of the structure has me wondering. I have no plans for a bumper mounted swing gate system as I don't want the weight, etc.
I have these on my SAS. See my post above #40
