Few Questions, Custom Tire Carrier, Adjustable shocks etc.

[sherwood]

I've been looking into lifting my 97' R50 for quite some time now. Now that I have the motivation to do so I think I'm about ready to place an order at 4x4parts.com. I have a few questions though, doesn't everyone?

 

First of all, I was looking for advice on custom rear bumpers, I'm not looking for anything too heavy. I want to eliminate sag. I backed into a seemingly (invisible) stump and well, you can guess the rest. Now I'm left without a crappy looking reinforcement bumper. I would really like a spare tire carrier attachment but I'm not sure how I'm going to do this without creating a large and heavy bumper. Does anyone have close up pictures of their custom

bumpers I could see?

 

I've been thinking about trying to copy Warns Jeep Wrangler bumper, it seems pretty simple but that wouldn't cover that ugly under body on the rear fenders, nor would I be able to add a tire carrier

Rear Bumper, Jeep Style.

^ From the looks of this, the bumper wraps around

 

Now on to the lift kits...I think I already made my decision to have them send me the Rancho package, with the Rancho struts and adjustable shocks. I was wondering if there's any downside to these particular shocks. Does Bilstein make a better quality shock? I've already on here that the KYB strut mounts are garbage so the associate I talked to at AC said they could add OEM mounts to my order and that their price for the mounts should be much cheaper than a dealers. Also, I'm fairly certain that the Rancho struts bolt up to the stock mounts with no problem, right?

 

Should I make some spacers and squeeze them during the install. Any advice is appreciated. I think I'm going to look at 1" spacers.

 

What about steering, how is that affected after the lift, is there any other problems? I've read that your struts will top out for a while after the lift, is this true for all cases, and are spacers just going to make this worse or fix that problem?

 

What is the backspacing I'm going to need for my tires to clear the struts?

[sherwood]

Bump?

[180sx]

Bumper: Do like pezzy and have one custom made.

 

Lift: Your rancho shocks should be fine. I can't tell you from personal experiance, but from what i've heard their fine. Also, check the sticky topics to read more on lifting.

 

Steering. You'll be fine.

 

Backspacing. no more than 4".

 

other: get some warn manual hubs to be on the safe side and releive your CV's a bit.

 

Jose