Everything You Need To Know About Fitting 37″ Tires on a Non-Sasquatch Package Bronco
Most of the non-sasquatch package Broncos come with 33″ all-terrain tires. My Badlands, for example, was equipped with 33″ BFG KO2s on the lot. Regardless of how your non-sasquatch is spec’d, you might be wondering what it takes to upgrade those small tires to 37″ tires. If you’re thinking about making the upgrade from 33″ tires, or even 35″ tires to 37″ tires, it’s pretty simple, however, there are some things to consider.
First, it’s important to understand that running 37″ tires, clearing 37″ tires, stuffing 37″ tires, and wheeling hard with 37″ tires are not the same. Just because you see a Bronco running 37″ tires on the street doesn’t mean they’re fully clearing them in reverse full lock or stuffing them when off-road.
In this post, I am going to break down everything you need to know about running 37″ tires on the 6th Gen Bronco – on the road.
In a future post, we’ll be removing our coilovers in order to cycle the suspension to find our max bump and droop travel. From there, we’ll install the needed bump stops and/or limit straps to prevent harsh top out and bottom out events.
Find what you need online:
- ARB OME Nitrocharger Lift Kit (optional): Check Price
1. Lift Kit
In order to run, stuff, and clear 37″ tires – you need a good lift kit.
We recommend a good suspension lift, not a spacer lift. Spacer lifts can increase your body height which will help clear tires, however, they limit suspension droop or “down travel”. Spacers cause other problems as well such as the potential to bottom out before the bump stop is reached. In addition to these common problems, spacers also provide stiff and rigid handling which results in a poor on-road driving experience.
Instead of a spacer lift, I recommend a brand-name mid-travel 2″ – 3″ suspension lift with upgraded shocks and springs. A good mid-travel suspension will offer more up and down travel over the factory and then when paired with good bump stops – you’ll have nothing to worry about when it comes to bottom-out events.
We decided to install the ARB Nitrocharger lift kit on our non-sasquatch package and it yielded almost a full 3″ of lift. For the money, this lift has been pretty impressive so far. For an overview of the kit, click that link and go read our installation guide and review.
2. Rock Sliders
Depending on the offset of your wheels, you’re likely going to rub on the factory rock sliders.
We’re running a -12mm offset on our RR6 Relation Race Wheels (RRW) so our rubbing is much more extreme than the factory 55mm offset.
If you’re running the factory wheels, you might be good here, however, most of us change our wheels and end up running a smaller or even negative offset. So, depending on your offset, you may need to trim your rock sliders.
We covered a full step-by-step overview process on how to cut back and trim the rock sliders to clear larger tires on the Bronco. It’s a simple process but you need to have some experience with a grinder as the angles are a bit awkward.
Check out that post for a reference on everything we did to properly cut back the sliders.
3. Trimming Bumper
Depending on your bumper, you might need to trim the plastics. We have the “capable” bumper (pictured above) which is similar to the “standard”. The standard and capable bumpers come on non-sasquatch models.
If you have a Sasquatch package then you will get the modular bumper – which doesn’t need trimming, you can simply remove the end caps.
We wrote a full step-by-step guide on how to trim the front bumper plastics for clearing larger tires. Check out that post for a reference on exactly what we did.
4. Outside Crash Bar
The front crash bar has to go. To remove the front crash bar, just loosen the top nuts. The bottom two nuts are tac welded in place.
You don’t need to fully remove the front bumper in order to remove the crash bar either. You can simply remove the bottom bolts on the inside of the bumper and then slightly push the bumper forward to pull out the crash bar.
5. Inside Crash Bar
The inside crash bar is easy. And, it might look like the bar collides with the rock sliders, but they don’t. The rock sliders do not need to be removed in order to pull out the inside bar.
Final Thoughts
Making the jump to a larger tire size on the Bronco is one of the main reasons we all bought a new Bronco in the first place, right?
Ford made it incredibly simple to run 37″ tires just by installing a few simple modifications.
The more I push this Bronco around, the more I love it.