Fender Trimming

After fitting the 35" tire to the back, it was obvious I was going to need to do a little trimming.  So out comes the Sawsall!  After trimming the opening, I drove that tire up an embankment to see how it was going to work.  Initial results were promising.

So you can see a tire was off the ground.

You can see I still had quite a bit of room around the tire.

The bad news is, things never behave the same on the trail as in controlled tests.  Luckily, I have a major pile of rocks in front of the house, so I was able to get the G into a more serious cross axled situation.

Driving opposing tires up the rocks makes everything twist much harder.  As you can see I have one tire WAY up in the air.  It might be deceiving in the picture, but it was around two feet in the air.

Unfortunately, it was the wrong tire that was initially in the air.  I have to stack to very heavy rocks then add my own weight to bring the front tire down.  I wanted the tire opposite the one with the 35" tire in the air to create as much strain on the suspension as possible.

I was rewarded with the tire settling much further into the well.  When I would jump up and down in the bed I could make the tire touch in two places.  I am happy with the results and will lengthen the bump stops a couple inches to make sure it can't go any higher than this under extreme loads.  It doesn't look that much tighter than the first picture due to the angle of the first shot, but trust me, it was much deeper this time.

I had to trim the front wheel well as well.  It was easy to test since I had taken a spring out.  I just jacked up the axle to the bump stop and turned side to side.  You can see how close it is, but experience has shown that you rarely completely compress the spring.  Even with all I did above, I never hit the bump stops on the rear.