For those of you who have AEV rear bumper and/or rear tire carrier, I'm sure you have been waiting and waiting for them to come out with a solution to mount your hi lift. For some reason, AEV thinks its acceptable to make us wait years for such a thing while promising us it's right around the corner...

I will be making the trek from South Texas to Moab in a months time, so I couldn't wait any longer.

I have a stock rear bumper and the tire carrier holding 35's. I originally had my hi lift mounted to the tailgate using the rugged ridge tailgate mount. This would no longer work with the AEV tire carrier installed. I wanted to still be able to use the shovel feature as well. Here is my DIY solution:

I had some scrap angle iron at work that I used. I made a template out of cardboard (Always the first step when I make anything). Then I removed the nice AEV finish, which was thicker and more durable than average and the factory rock rails. After much fine tuning, I welded on the angle iron.





I then drilled holes to mount my old rugged ridge mount, and painted





Then bolt up the old mount and load up your new solid-as-a-rock hi lift carrier!



Shovel still works by passing the handle through the cut out. It's very tight though



Done. Along with my rigid industries reverse lights and a custom bracket made to hold my CB, scanner, and my powertank through the center of the spare. NO MORE waiting!



PS- I have a piece of leather scrap on the rugged ridge hi lift mount, and everything is absolutely 100% silent. Good luck to anyone who wants to try this. Pretty easy.

 

Nce welding man! Beads look great! Also, if I came to visit, could I sling that supermoto around a couple of times?

 

Haha, thanks man. They welded up ok. It was my first time welding with a MIG with no shield gas. It was interesting as I usually TIG.

Also, I'm in love with that Supermoto. Sold my crotch rocket to buy it and couldn't be happier. SOO much fun to be able to pull off the road and hit a "jump" in the ditch.

 

AEV never said it was "right around the corner". In fact if you visit their forum they have said many times it will be ready when it's ready. AEV always spends a lot of time engineering their products and Dave has said several times if you need it any time soon then you might want to go buy something else. With that said, nice welding job.

 

They have never released anything on their website. But I personally talked to people in their sales office when I purchased the tire carrier from them and requested stickers that they were "in production" and should be "shipping with-in 3-4 weeks". That was about 5 months ago. AEV does make great stuff, and I would definitely buy more products from them, but the wait for something like this is a little ridiculous.

 

If you take a look at the back cover of the 2011 Q-Tech fall catalog you'll notice they have three new options for their bumper: splash guards, hi-lift bracket and 10gal fuel caddy! It looks like the wait is over! It does appear that your solution for the hi-lift bracket, as long as you can weld, costs a little less then $199...

Chris

 

Very nice work!

 

Very nice job.
Do you have any pictures of the shovel mount (mounted)?

 

No pics on me right now (I'm at work), but you can check it out in any of a number of my videos on my youtube channel.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feGAqOQrJhw

 

Can I get some more info on the Powertank mount? Am I missing somehting in the pic above?