Shackle cross member??? Defined Engineering

im starting to see where your going now , and believe me its not a gimmick . its a well tested , well built product that does exactly what it is intended for

as for your first question: that is typically how new products are born.

where are you located?

id say about 2 of 5 tacomas i see have this problem , some worse than others and they have been appearing a lot over the past year or so as these trucks get older.

i orginally designed it about 4 or so years ago to fix a problem with concerns of fatigue. but as i started getting more and more tacomas through my hands i noticed my concern was valid. i started using it to fix bent shackle buckets from fatigue and also from rock damage on the trail. thought it would be a useful product for people that wanted to fix and/or strengthen their fame at such a critical point.

i have been selling them for the past year or so and its one of my best selling products.i push it as more of a preventive maintenance piece than anything else , because its only a matter of time if you regularly use your truck as intended

 

No clue, that's why I am asking. I can't keep track of every fabricator across the country or what they are doing.

lol...my inquiry is valid and I am curious. I apologize if my comments regarding stiffening the frame of a stock truck with stock suspension running fire roads were not taken into consideration. It was the main topic of this thread.

You need to remember the majority of members here don't wheel like you do so when we do ask questions or state our opinions maybe cut us some slack. I could of asked it in a different way, but that's me. Opinions are based off of personal experience....if I have no experience with an issue then my opinion will reflect so.

If I offended you or anyone else with my lack of knowledge or how I came off in this thread I apologize.

That explains everything. I wasn't implying it was a gimmick and I hope I didn't come off that way, I truly have not seen a failure. In my region (NE) most people crawl. We don't have the open space for high speeds.

I checked mine last night out of curiosity and while they don't seem to be pushed outwards there are signs of stress against the frame and signs of cracking at the OE welds on the brackets themselves. I do have damage to my shackle mounts from hitting obstacles and don't run high speeds so I get it. With further explanation I now understand and can see how these would benefit a vehicle including my own.

Thank you.

 

it does moar.

the "K" brace links the two leaf hangers as well, and the frame. so same concept, just a link to the frame near the rear as well.

this seems legit. if i didn't have an XBrace installed, this would have been another option for me.

chassis rigidity improvments in the rear of the truck will help as our beds are light and relatively not rigid; the back end of the frame tends to wobble about like a noodle.

this would, probably, alleviate this.

 

No

 

Here's mine installed:

 

Why does Defined say the spare can still be mounted in the OEM position?

 

He said no when I emailed him about it

 

You must have missed this

 

This is what happens when I respond to posts after 2 hours of sleep...I'm beginning to act as stupid as Whipperderper, please make it stop!

 

And that sucks because I really wanted one of them after thinking that the spare would fit...

 

So a spare wont fit with this product under a double cab short bed or it woun't allow a spare even with the full length bed? (access cab, dclb)

Also, why didn't defined copy the x runner brace design a little more, the diagonal bars should add something. If it can't work with a spare then I feel like it could be designed better. Plus you would probably catch alot of attention if you could say bolt in x runner style brace... you know, x for X-treme