Oh sweet Jesus!! My Tiregate is sitting at a shipping place like 30 min from where I live. They won't be able to deliver until Monday. Unless I can get them to "release it" to me today. Which means getting from Redmond to Seatac before 6 and starting the drive at about 4. Might need some Houdini tricks to pull this one off!
VT series tire carrier by Tiregate
- Thread starter daverami
- Start date
So after what has seemed like an unending process I got a call from the shipping company that the Tiregate was in the area on Friaday. Managed to get them to release it to me that day instead of having to wait until today or Tuesday.
Initial Impressions:
In a word, beefy. I mean it comes as pretty much 4 main pieces (the right and left uprights, the bar the connects left to right, and the actual swing out gate) with bolts and such mixed in. All of it is powdercoated and just damn sexy looking. Haha.
Install:
Doesn't get much more simple than this. Removed a couple parts that woud normally hold the tailgate on. Put the gate off the side and using the bolts, connect the left and right uprights. Leave a little room for tightening the bolts. Then line up the left and right uprights to the factory holes and do the same thing, tighten, but leave a little bit of room. Then, put the plasctic bushing on the pivot side(right side) of the gate and slide it into place. A couple of bolts to secure it to the frame. Then tighten to various bolts to the ft/lbs on the instructions and that's about it. The instructions also mention checking the bolts after about a week of driving and tightening where needed. I have some pics, but they're not the best quality so I will retake some and post them to this writeup soon.
So far:
Like I said, pretty easy install. And it looks and is beefy! Clocks in at about 100lbs. So double what the acutal tailgate weighs. Sometime soon I'm going to do a couple things which I think are key. I'm going to weld the bolts that hold the spare on. Also going to mount a hi-lift jack on it. And I will keep an eye on the pins that lock it into place. Right now it is a little bit of a process to line them both up. As for ride qaulity, there is absolutely no movement, the gate is solid and the same applies to the spare. There was no discernable noise (wnd or rattling) that I could hear. Anyway, I'll throw up some pics soon and get around to a follow up write in 6 months or so.
Afterthought:
I gotta say, I am torn on my experience with Wilco. On the one side, I ordered this thing back in early Jan. when I was told they "had one left in stock". That tuned into it was getting fabricated, which turned into the wrong Tiregate, which turned what should have been a two week wait into a 2 month wait. I had to keep tabs on them pretty regularly. Calls and e-mails were more often than not left without a return call or e-mail from Wilco. So that did start to get to be a pain.
On the other side, I got a pretty good deal on this thing. Didn't pay tax, didn't pay shipping (although came to find out that's not saying much as they buld the price into the initial price) and when they made the wrong Tiregate, they did knock off another $50. And there were a number of times when they did get back to me promptly and one time when the guy I dealt with acutally called his production guy at home to get to the bottom of an issue and called me after hours to let me know what was up.
All in all, I wasn't on a particular time frame and I have it now so I'm happy. And for the hassle to get it, Wilco does make one hell of an impressive product!
Initial Impressions:
In a word, beefy. I mean it comes as pretty much 4 main pieces (the right and left uprights, the bar the connects left to right, and the actual swing out gate) with bolts and such mixed in. All of it is powdercoated and just damn sexy looking. Haha.
Install:
Doesn't get much more simple than this. Removed a couple parts that woud normally hold the tailgate on. Put the gate off the side and using the bolts, connect the left and right uprights. Leave a little room for tightening the bolts. Then line up the left and right uprights to the factory holes and do the same thing, tighten, but leave a little bit of room. Then, put the plasctic bushing on the pivot side(right side) of the gate and slide it into place. A couple of bolts to secure it to the frame. Then tighten to various bolts to the ft/lbs on the instructions and that's about it. The instructions also mention checking the bolts after about a week of driving and tightening where needed. I have some pics, but they're not the best quality so I will retake some and post them to this writeup soon.
So far:
Like I said, pretty easy install. And it looks and is beefy! Clocks in at about 100lbs. So double what the acutal tailgate weighs. Sometime soon I'm going to do a couple things which I think are key. I'm going to weld the bolts that hold the spare on. Also going to mount a hi-lift jack on it. And I will keep an eye on the pins that lock it into place. Right now it is a little bit of a process to line them both up. As for ride qaulity, there is absolutely no movement, the gate is solid and the same applies to the spare. There was no discernable noise (wnd or rattling) that I could hear. Anyway, I'll throw up some pics soon and get around to a follow up write in 6 months or so.
Afterthought:
I gotta say, I am torn on my experience with Wilco. On the one side, I ordered this thing back in early Jan. when I was told they "had one left in stock". That tuned into it was getting fabricated, which turned into the wrong Tiregate, which turned what should have been a two week wait into a 2 month wait. I had to keep tabs on them pretty regularly. Calls and e-mails were more often than not left without a return call or e-mail from Wilco. So that did start to get to be a pain.
On the other side, I got a pretty good deal on this thing. Didn't pay tax, didn't pay shipping (although came to find out that's not saying much as they buld the price into the initial price) and when they made the wrong Tiregate, they did knock off another $50. And there were a number of times when they did get back to me promptly and one time when the guy I dealt with acutally called his production guy at home to get to the bottom of an issue and called me after hours to let me know what was up.
All in all, I wasn't on a particular time frame and I have it now so I'm happy. And for the hassle to get it, Wilco does make one hell of an impressive product!
4Rescue
Expedition Leader
x2 I can't say from experience, but that appears to be MASSIVELY overpriced for what looks like four old control arms (for some reason it just looks like Rubi-Express long-arms welded together) and bushings with a piece of sheet-metal welded in between and some fancy pins. I think there are better products out there for the money. Maybe there's something I'm not seeing from the limited picture, but I just can't wrap my head around a $600 price-tag for that. Plus I think it'll look pretty wierd with a canopy and no actual tail-gate. Oh well, YMMV eh. Do what you want mate, one many's ugly mess is another mans Van Gogh eh (althought I find beauty in engineering and function , probably why I find Series Rovers, 40Series Cruisers, Flat-Fenders and other old trucks so beautiful)
Plus from the above post from the guy who actually has one... Doesn't sound like the people make it deserve to be cahrging such a premium if they can't get their excrement together eh
Like I said, Buy a Marlin rear bumper and mod it: Cheaper, and a proven piece of quality equipment that willmake your truck look and function better IMO.In adition I'd be worried that any rear-end collision or even a "trail stumble" would cause more damage to assosciated aprts then a standard swing-out on the Bumper set-up. think about it, is the tail gate mounting area (the four corners that this thing mounts to) meant to hold the weight of a Tire??? Is it designed to be the first thing to take a hit in the event of a rear-ender or a badly timed roll-back on the trail??? Not really IMO, I think that stress would be better suited to being distributed to the frame.
I guess what I'm talking a LONG time to say is that I put that in the bad-value category and would pass personaly.
Cheers
Dave
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daverami
Explorer
Thanks, looking forward to seeing the pics!
Plus from the above post from the guy who actually has one... Doesn't sound like the people make it deserve to be cahrging such a premium if they can't get their excrement together eh
Dave
Hey Dave,
To be fair, while I was not too impressed with the customer service side I am overwhelmingly impressed with the product.
Says the man with:
ICON 2.5 coilovers,AC 3 leaf pack,Bilstein shocks, 3" Body lift, Titan front differential, Pathfinder half shafts, 305/70R16, American Outlaw Colt wheels, KMA rear bumper, Black Widow Off Road hi-lift mount, Home made utilitrac spare tire mount, Airflow snorkel, Shrockworks sliders and skids......haha.
I think, and I could be wrong (cause I don't know how I would even prove it one way or the other) but I think the only issue would be the orange pin that holds the Tiregate in place. But if you look at the last pic, it looks like the pin is just a couple inches past the actual end of the bed. So I think that if you had a canopy, you would simply have to open the Tiregate to open/close the canopy. And when the canopy is closed, the Tiregate would close, and that orange pin would sit a couple inches from it.