Hopefully this is the right spot for this thread. This is to serve as a review for this product, ask some questions, and maybe help some others who are considering buying it.

I don't see Kevin's Off Road discussed too much on this site. I first learned of them from a co-worker with a WJ, and they seem to cater more to the Grand Cherokee crowd, although they have plenty of parts for XJs and seem to be well-known for their death wobble parts in particular. I decided to buy their rooftop tire carrier for my XJ. Here is the link to the product:
http://www.kevinsoffroad.com/cart/ti...version-p-833/

Why a rooftop tire carrier?
1. I want my spare 33" tire on the outside of my Jeep.
2. I can't afford a fancy swing-out tire carrier bumper yet.
3. I see a lot of Jeeps with the spare tire inside a basket, but the basket is so small that the tire fills almost the whole thing, making it nearly useless. I decided I'd rather buy this cheaper carrier that I can also bolt a shovel and hi-lift to, and I still have the front half of my roof open to strap stuff to the stock rails or maybe add a small basket there later.

So, I get the rack and it looks pretty cool. The packing for shipping was pretty meh, but all the parts were still there. The hardware is wrapped in separate little ziplocs, which is very handy. No installation guide, but they have them on their site:
http://kevinsoffroad.com/wp-content/...re-Carrier.pdf

First problem: these directions are flippin terrible. It refers to their light bar, there is one useless photo that isn't even of this rack, no mention at all of the shovel or hi-lift mounts, just crap. But hey, there is a comment section on their site on the installation guide page. I decide to post there instead of e-mailing them, figuring other people might have the same question and see the answer. Do they reply to my post? Nope, it sits unanswered for several weeks and then gets deleted. WTF?

So far, KOR is getting a D for customer service here.

Now, let's look at the rack. I don't have a great photo of it without the tire on, but basically it consists of two bars that span the stock roof rack rails, a plate in the middle to mount the tire to, and brackets at both ends for the shovel and hi-lift. After reading through some of their other roof rack and tire carrier installation guides and looking at all the parts, I get a sense of how I think this thing is supposed to go together, and I start mounting it up.

At each corner there is a U-shaped foot on the rack and a U-shaped bracket piece. The bracket has rectangular holes that two carriage bolts go into. This assembly is supposed to clamp onto the roof rails, but it doesn't seem to quite fit.

One of the clamps lines up like this:


And the other three line up like this because of the length of the carrier:


Neither one gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. The first one makes me nervous because if the clamp slips horizontally, the bolts will be loose. In the second one, the clamps are at an angle, so the bolts don't clamp down well. After lots of tightening, it seems pretty secure though, so I decide to try putting the tire up there.

This brings me to the question that I posted on their site that got deleted. How am I supposed to bolt up the hardware for the tire? It is not mentioned anywhere in the instructions. Here is the hardware they give you.

Two sets of:
-a piece of all-thread about 6" long
-3 nuts
-a flat washer
-a lock washer

After monkeying around with it, here is how I have everything bolted up right now. I would welcome opinions on a better way to do it. From the top down it's like this on each piece of all-thread:
-nut
-through lug nut hole in wheel (mounted face down)
-several inch gap of all-thread
-nut
-through long slot in flat plate on top of tire carrier
-large flat washer
-lock washer
-nut

I managed to get this cranked down pretty tight, but it's difficult to tighten because the all-thread just wants to spin through all the bolts without pulling them together, if that makes sense. Here are some photos of the tire mounting:





And here it is on my Jeep, no hi-lift or shovel yet:


One more nitpicky complaint: the shovel attaches with like some conduit brackets, and they don't even fit over the bolts they provide. I'll have to drill out the holes in the brackets. It's kind of silly that I have to modify the kit to get it to work as designed.

Final thoughts:
Design/build: B-. Pretty good. It's a simple system that gets the job done, but the attachment system could be improved.
Installation instructions: F. Just terrible.
Customer service: D. It was shipped just wrapped in bubble wrap and saran wrap, and they deleted my post about how to install the thing.

We'll see how this thing holds up to being jostled around on the roof. I plan to add some loc-tite to the bolts and keep checking them to make sure they stay tight. The last thing I want is heavy stuff flying off my roof on the highway.

 

Update on this thread, if anyone is interested. I got my hi-lift mounted with a little modification to the tire carrier. The spacing of the mounts was wrong for my jack, and the attachment holes were not slotted for adjustment, so I had to enlarge them to make it work. Again, not that hard, but another annoyance with this product. The jack fit securely when it was all done though and tucked up nicely against the spare tire. Everything was still tight to the roof rails and seemed to hold the load well, with just some slight deformation of the rails where I tightened the clamps down.

Then the rack met its untimely end this morning when I tried to drive into a parking garage. The garage is only 6'-9" tall, which is BS. Hell, I've got a cousin that's taller than that! Anyway, it caught the top of the tire and bent the hell out of the tire carrier. This thing is toast, and it messed up my roof rail on the passenger side too.

I guess my next plan is to get a gutter-mounted roof rack or spring for a rear bumper with a tire carrier. I really like the rear bumper option except for the loss of visibility.

Here are some pictures of the damage:

 

Talking about a rear bumper carrier have you looked at http://www.jcroffroad.com/product/XJBRTC/XJ-R-DX.html The tire mount is adjustable and the way its designed you might get away with drilling more holes and dropping it down more if you wanted.And when you go off road you could put it back up higher for clearance.

 

I have a custom built roof top carrier/basket/Front & Rear Light Bar with expanded metal bottom. It works great but the first time I had the Jeep out on the trails with the spare 33x12:50x15/tools/fuel I thought it looked great!!!

But........the first hillside I had to transverse (not much of one at all) it felt like I was going to roll the XJ over with just a 3" lift. Really top heavy, I had no idea needless to say I didn't head out that way again. So I went home to shop for a HD rear bumper/tire carrier after a couple of days I found one that I liked plus it had a built on Hi-Lift jack carrier, antenna mounts, receiver hitch, black powder coated. The real closer was $600 delivered and without a single scratch, well packaged.

YMMV

 

Thank you for the review. Though I have not purchased the tire carrier I have purchased the death wobble kit for the XJ and would recommend the kit all day long (maybe not the prices..) but will raise my hand and say the customer service leaves a hell of a bad taste in my mouth. I posted and sent emails that also went unanswered and received orders incomplete. I will not be sending him my hard earned money any time soon.. my .02

 

Where can I get this bumper you speak of?

 

Seriously! Most of the bumpers I've seen are in the $1,000 ballpark.

 

I've been looking for a rear bumper that doesn't restrict vision or cost a grand. This is the best looking option I've found so far:

http://www.protofab4x4.com/products.php?ID=00&ID2=32

It has mount brackets that "sandwich" the "frame" rails similar to how a tow hitch mounts, in addition to the stock bracket mounts. Looks very beefy. Only drawback is it comes unfinished so you have to add the price of whatever paint you wanna put on. Plus the shipping sounds expensive, so I'm still undecided/too poor.

 

I like the look of the Smittybilt bumper which goes for $750 most places, but I'm not sure if it's actually available yet. It has room for a jerry can and hi-lift too, but it doesn't put the tire on the driver's side. The vertical placement of the tire is very adjustable though.

 

With d-rings and shipping etc its close to $900. I also emailed them a couple questions and never got a response. I'm not sure i like how it uses a couple of heim's instead of a spindle for the swing out.

I ended up ordering a tailbone for $450 shipped, cant wait to get it

http://www.detoursusa.com/tailbone.php

 

Potatowalker look up reviews on them before you buy it.I read a few their tire carrier gets hard to unlock latch over time.

 

I like it! Thanks for sharing this one...