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It's not really a brush guard, it's a whole bumper, so its mounts don't have to work around the factory bumper cover or crash bar or whatever. I assume it bolts straight to the unibody where the factory bumper mounts, where the body's built to take that kind of load. The nice thing about RainGoat's guards is that if they do fail, there's only so much damage they're gonna do to what's behind them; they don't have a big tall section to slap back against the body and cause damage away from the site of the actual impact. Worst case, your bumper cover gets screwed up, and that was gonna take a hit either way. Looks like a good setup and sounds like they were well-built.

I got the Dorman brand ones from the parts store. I think they’re rubber too but they have some sort of coating that’ll hopefully extend the life past one measly year. They literally have no scent to them at all and there’s a weird rainbow looking sheen on their surface. It looks very much like oil on the surface of water. This was kind of an emergency repair since the whole rack was moving around. On a tight curve I was getting 60-90 degrees of steering wheel travel before it would catch and start steering. I actually almost crashed the last time I was going thru the mountains because of it, well that and the passenger side control arm bushing was almost completely gone. I would definitely like to have been able to put urethanes on there.

Link be dead. Could you send me the link though? I need a cooler my self for deer, beer and dip lol

I agree with both of these. I have a front frontrunner style & a rear bumper gaurd. Both have “pushbar” rubber contacts. They are very useful for people low speed backing into you (or nudging others). Off road, I found them very useful at literally “guarding” against brush. They pushed branches, bushes, saplings & other pliable plantlife out of the way & made a HUGE difference in preventing cosmetic damage. I also was able to use the frontrunner one in front to mount effective auxiliary lights. The key is really to be mounted low where you actually impact the brush. The rear protected me from a trailer that came loose & made it possible to stand on the rear bumper without slipping off. While the front was mangled in an accident, I was actually pretty pleased with its performance. It undoubtedly took some of the force of the impact, lessened the damage & left my truck driveable. All that said, I was very happy with mine. They were for camping & light duty & did just what I asked. I always wanted a full metal bumper & winch but that was well beyond my means & really my needs. Now that I’m commiting to a more hard core vehicle & I have more cash to throw at it, I’m doing more. That XRox is a different beast entirely.

About a year ago, maybe a little less or little more, I made some rack bushings out of some high grade neoprene rubber I had in the shop at work and yesterday I found them to have failed. Some of y’all probably already know this but for those who don’t know like me, neoprene is not good for bushings. I thought because good quality SO/SJ cable comes jacketed in neoprene that it might be a good choice, but it’s not. Around a year in the presence of oil and pressure (clamp force) neoprene begins to separate.

It's an XROX bar. They're Aussie made, ~1300AU plus shipping, will hopefully be fitting one to my R50 in the next few months. They're airbag compliant and also have mounting bolts for recovery points on the side of the winch cradle.

A lift of that height would sure be quite a project. I'll sum up by listing the absolute necessities. Front suspension parts: Custom fabbed 6" SFD (will need to include blocks to drop the front subframe, engine mounts, steering shaft joint, strut tower spacers) 2" coils (available from AC Custom lengthened front driveshaft (probably to include double CV joints due to the much greater angles) Longer brake lines Rear suspension: Appropriate combination of either Grand Cherokee or Land Rover springs & spacers (the right springs could probably net you 6" then 2"spacers) Longer shocks (gonna have to do your homework to find what would work best) Custom fabbed panhard drop bracket Custom lengthened upper & lower trailing arms (panhard bracket & trailing arms would be to keep proper rear axle geometry & alignment) Custom lengthened rear driveshaft Longer brake lines Can it and has it been done? Yes. Is it a ton of fabrication, figuring, work and money? Yes. Is it worth all of this to be able to get 35's or maybe 37's under a vehicle that can't be regeared to compensate for the much larger tires? Depends on your wants and intended use. If all you're looking to build is a show queen, mall crawler or boulevard bruiser, than as long as all the work is done properly, with safety and driveability in mind, and dropping close to 10-grand to build a unique ride isn't an issue, go for it! Don't expect it to be a good commuter or daily driver (not saying you couldn't, just wouldn't be very practical), or an amazingly powerful mud bogger or rock crawler (unless yyou take the project even further, adding a transfer case doubler and/or doing a solid axle swap, which would make almost all on the above list null & void). Keep us posted on your decision

That won't do much. You really need a full bar like this

JDM. Also on my truck (which is entirely JDM with a diesel ?)

OEM for R50's w HID's. @onespiritbrain @ferrariowner123 has a few sets for both his 96 and 03 and I think @XPLORx4 also has a set on his rig as well.

Side by side Mr Cox 96R50-97JR50

These should be it: https://www.4x4parts.com/i-21184333-power-steering-rack-bushings.html

Start looking around the forum for something called a sub-frame drop (SFD). You'll need to fabricate one of those for a 6" lift, and then add 2" lift coils. You could theoretically do an 8" SFD with stock coils, but personally I don't like the idea of putting the subframe on stilts that tall. I believe that size has been done a couple times now, so you should be able to get steering to work, not sure if you'll need a custom front driveshaft. You'll almost certainly need one in the rear and custom links, but these things seem to vary from case-to-case more than makes sense. Oh yeah, and you'll of course need longer brake lines and way longer shocks and springs in the rear, there's a few different vehicles that people have use parts from for that stuff before, you'll start to find out more about it as you research SFD's.