When I purchased my 96 Cherokee XL, the original owner had added front and rear bumpers from Nates4x4. I was impressed with the design and the build quality, but I wanted a rear tire mount. After some junkyard searching, I found a Jeep XL OEM swing away carrier that I adapted to the Nates 4x4 bumper. It latched to the rear hatch but proved inadequate to hold the 33" spare. In fact, it continued to bend and the spare could not be kept vertical. It would droop as much as 25 degrees from vertical, at which time I would rebound the piping to shore it up.

Finally, I had enough and went on a search for a serious rear bumper with a swing away tire carrier. I was very impressed with Nates4x4 tire carrier with Jerry can mount. At $690 with shipping and no tax, it seemed a steal. Well, its been delivered, swapping the older Nates4x4 rear bumper was straightforward and the the whole operation took right about 3 hours. The quality of the bumper assembly was similar to heavy duty construction grade. Mounting two 5 gallon Jerry cans of unleaded, the Hi-Lift jack and an additional 1 gallon gas spare center mounted on my 33" spare had no impact on the smoothness on the swing given the bearing dimensions of the swivel. The latch system works perfectly and the whole assembly is very rigid. No more thumping and clattering from the rear in washboard terrain or rock climbing.

I've included a few pictures of the final install, as I couldn't find much detail when I was searching. All together a first class solution!

 

Do you have any photos of the side where the bumper edge meets the lower?

 

How long from purchase to delivery?

 

Is it just me or does it seem there is to much weight (that's a lot for sure) is carried to far out away from the bumper. How far does it extend from the hatch to the furthest point out?

 

The outermost face of the mounted 33" spare is 21" from the face of the hatch and 16" out from the rearmost face of the bumper. The bumper is massive and bolted to the frame bumper mounts as well as the frame itself. Fully loaded, there is no difference in handling or front end oversteer. Except for the excess weight of the bumper assembly over the original, this is the same weight that I was carrying. The spare tire projects out an additional 2" over my modified OEM spare tire carrier.

 

Here is a photo of the passenger side outer edge of the bumper showing the edge of the lower body , the swivel and the shaft supporting the swing arm and bearing assembly. Looking closely at the bottom of the bumper you can see the lower weld for the swing-arm shaft. Delivery took a bit over 8 weeks.

 

I'm not getting the warm and fuzzies from this picture....doesn't look like enough support.

 

Of course there are the two 4x4 inch 4-bolt connections to the frame as part of the original bumper mount point, in addition to the two braces directly bolted to the frame underside as you have pictured.

 

yea but it seems that the way the mounts are set up, all the the leverage and weight is still being applied to the upper 4 bolts on the factory bumper holes.

 

Agreed. I would want some 2x4 tubing going into the frame rails to help support all that weight. The little tie in brackets that bolt underneath help when pulling from the bumper for recovery, but will not help the original 4 bolt holes and you will end up cracking the thin sheet metal of the rear crossmember with all that weight hanging off of them I would think.