Uneek 4×4 Rear Bar Review for the 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser
After having our Uneek 4×4 rear bar fitted to our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser for almost two years we thought we would do a review post updating our original build blog post back in October 2019. You can read our original post here detailing the installation of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser.
Our overall opinion of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar has changed now that we have had almost two years (40,000kms) testing it out in all sorts of different conditions exploring Australia. Below we discuss in detail what has worked well and some of the issues we have had with the Uneek 4×4 rear bar.
Why We Needed a Rear Bar
You might be wondering why we needed a rear bar on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser. Firstly, running bigger and heavier tyres causes all sorts of problems if your spare tyre hangs off a rear barn door. If you hardly ever go off-road, then you can probably get away with this. But if you go off-road regularly and are driving bumpy corrugated roads for long periods of time, you will run into issues with your rear barn door when it is supporting a bigger heavier tyre. We changed from the stock 31-inch wheels with all-terrains, to 33-inch wheels with mud-terrains. This was an increase in 12kgs per wheel. If you want to read more about tyre and rim weights you can read our post here. This additional weight on the rear barn door would eventually cause it to fail if it needed to support all this additional weight when driving corrugated roads. Fitting a rear bar with a spare tyre swing arm removes the weight from your rear door with all the weight being supported by the rear bar which is connected to your chassis.
Another benefit of fitting a rear bar is the ability to carry a second spare wheel or jerry cans when adding a second swing arm on the left-hand side of the rear bar. We will not use the second swing arm for jerry cans but instead a second spare wheel when we have the GVM to be able to carry another 45kgs on the rear of our 76 Series Land Cruiser. A good rear bar will usually have hi-lift jack points if you use one of these. They can also come with rear recovery points, the Uneek 4×4 rear bar does not have these. Finally, they add additional protection when out on the tracks in the event you bump into the side of a rock or something similar. Overall, they provide a bunch of additional uses, plus benefits, and are a great upgrade to any 4WD wagon.
What’s Great About the Rear Bar?
We will start with the positives and what features of Uneek 4×4 rear bar we like on our 76 (70) Series Toyota Land Cruiser.
Clever Rear Door Design
The biggest difference between the Uneek 4×4 rear bar and all others in the market, that is Kaymar, Thorburns, The Cruiser Company and others, is the design of the right-hand side spare wheel swing arm. Uneek 4×4 designed their rear bar for the 76 Series Land Cruiser to allow you to open the right-hand side barn door without the need to unlatch the spare tyre swing arm first. Compared to the other rear bars that secure the swing arm to the bottom of the rear bar with a latch. This requires you to unlatch the swing arm, swing the spare tyre carrier open, and then you can open your rear barn doors. This is a clever design by Uneek 4×4 and makes life easier when opening the rear doors especially during day-to-day driving.
This design feature of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar was one of the main selling points for us when we first decided on which rear bar to go with on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser. However, even though it is a great feature, it also causes its biggest issues which we will discuss in more detail below.
Looks Great Plus LED Lights
We know that looks are not everything, but come on, we all do like great looking modifications. When it comes to looks, the Uneek 4×4 rear bar ticks all the boxes. The rear bar follows the shape of the 76 Series Land Cruiser perfectly, although not hard too do when it is just a big rectangle. The textured black powder coat finish looks great and suits the white 76 Land Cruiser perfectly. They have added a tread plate step in the middle of the bar which makes it easy to step up and not slip when wet or muddy. Also having the steel rear bar does allow us to step up on it on the sides to get better access to our Pioneer Platform without worrying about damaging anything. The rear bar also comes standard with upgraded LED rear lights as well as additional LED reverse lights.
All these features are great and a massive improvement to the stock standard rear bumper on the 76 Series Land Cruiser. But after almost two years of running with the Uneek 4×4 rear bar on our 76 Series Land Cruiser that is about as far as we can go when it comes to positives.
What We Dislike About the Rear Bar
When we decided to purchase the Uneek 4×4 rear bar we were super excited and thought we had made the right decision. At the time it probably was as there are lots more options in the market in 2021 that they were in 2019. Back then it was basically a choice between Uneek 4×4 or Kaymar. The other issue was the feedback we found online ignored its biggest flaws, maybe this is because of sponsorship or just not fully testing the rear bar before providing glowing reviews.
Rear Door Moves & Squeaks Constantly
What we thought was the biggest benefit of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar with the ability to open the rear door without having to unlatch the tyre carrier has turned out to cause its biggest problems. The rear bar does take the weight of the spare tyre, but the swing arm is connected to the rear door by an adjustable tie rod. This connection via the tie rod causes plenty of problems. The tie rod is adjustable which allows you to adjust how tight the rear swing arm sits against the rear door. The swing arm sits on a “soft stop” which is connected to the rear barn door. Trying to get this adjustment just right is ridiculously difficult. Either the tyre sits to tightly against the rear door pulling the rear doors away from the body of the 76, or it sits too loose, and the spare tyre moves or vibrates with the slightest bump.
When the spare tyre is sitting too tight against the rear door pulling the barn doors away from the body of the 76 this leads to a whole bunch of issues. Firstly, the rear doors are no longer sitting tightly up against the rubber seals leading to large amounts of dust ingress when travelling along gravel roads. The amount of dust that comes in through the rear barn doors is next level, it is so bad! The second issue is that when driving over any bump, no matter how small, the rear doors vibrate and move causing the most annoying squeaks and rattles. This is caused by the locking mechanisms on the rear door rubbing up against the latches on the body of the Cruiser causing all the noise. It drives us crazy it is that bad. We have been able to reduce the noise for short periods of time by covering the door locking latches with WD40 spray oil, but it does not last long. Any dust ingress covers the oil, and the squeaks start up again.
When the spare tyre is sitting too loose against the rear door this just means the spare tyre moves even more when driving over any bumps, big or small. As the spare tyre carrier is connected to the rear door, any movement in the spare tyre leads to movement in the rear door. This movement in the rear door leads to the exact same issues detailed above with dust ingress, squeaks, and noise. We have adjusted the tie rod settings more than 30 times over the last 24 months and have never been able to stop these issues. What seemed to be the biggest benefit of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar has led to the biggest issues with this rear bar. We do not see any way around this as the spare tyre carrier is always connected to the rear door, any movement in the spare tyre is going to lead to movement in the rear door. Therefore, in our opinion this is a bad design if you ever plan on driving off the bitumen for long periods of time, which is one of the main reasons why you would choose to fit the Uneek 4×4 rear bar in the first place. We now understand why companies like Kaymar & Thorburns, who have been making rear bars for a very long time, have designed their spare tyre swing arm locking latches the way they have. As they have no connection between the swing arm and the rear door there is no chance that any movement in the spare tyre will affect the rear door. This is not to say the Kaymar rear bar does not make any noise as we have heard they can be quite noisy, but they would not have the same issues with the rear door moving causing large amounts of dust ingress.
Noise Issues Resolved by Adding Additional Rubbers
Just before adding this post we have been able to stop all the noise caused by the spare tyre vibrating. In order to do this we have had to add additional rubbers between the body of the 76 Series Land Cruiser and the rear barn doors. This additional rubber has made the rear doors far more difficult to close, they need to be slammed shut but it does seem to have eliminated the noise. From what we can determine, the additional rubber has led to an extremely tight fit which seems to have eliminated all the movement in the doors and therefore the noise. We will need to test this out on some corrugated roads but currently it appears to have done the trick. We purchased the rubber seal from Bunnings for about $20. You can see where we have fitted the rubber seal in the pictures below.
Tie Rod Jam Nuts Seized
As a result of all the movement we have experienced in the spare tyre and rear door we had an issue after about 2,000kms of driving along gravel roads and through the Simpson Desert where the tie rod jam nuts seized. As we use the spare tyre as a step to get up onto our Pioneer Platform when touring to remove our gear, we noticed the spare tyre moving more than usual. We grabbed our canvas bag of tools and tried to loosen the tied rod jam nuts so that we could adjust the tie rod setting to get a tighter fit. As a result of all the movement in the spare tyre due to all the vibrations from the corrugations we could not loosen any of the nuts as they had seized onto the tie rod. We had to leave the spare tyre carrier as it was until we returned home to our shed. We had to fully remove the tie rod mechanism from the 76 Series Land Cruiser and using a significant amount of heat from a blow torch and a hammer eventually loosen these nuts. This problem has not occurred again, but we regularly check the tie rod every 6 months or so to eliminate this from occurring.
Powder Coat Takes a Hammering Underneath
The overall textured powder coat finish of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser looks great. However, we have found over time that most of the powder coat on the underside of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar has been removed from rocks and gravel. This has occurred on the sides of the rear bar behind the rear wheels. We are not saying this is an issue with the Uneek 4×4 bar itself as we are running wider tyres from stock, but it is something to be aware of. We will need to touch these sections as they have gone back to bare metal and will start to rust. We are sure that the same issues would occur no matter the brand of rear bar you choose. The powder coat has also chipped around the swing arm bearing housing which you can see in the pictures below.
Other Important Points
We have discussed what we like and dislike about our Uneek 4×4 rear bar on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser, but there are some other important points you should consider when looking at this rear bar.
Do Not Forget About the Additional Weight
The additional weight is an obvious factor that should be considered when looking at fitting any rear bar to any 4WD. As payloads are not endless and GVM is so important in any 4WD build, you really need to weigh up the pros and cons of fitting a rear bar. The Uneek 4×4 rear bar for the 76 Series Land Cruiser weighs approximately 45kgs on its own. Then you need to factor in the weight of each swing arm at 10kgs each (this is for the tyre swing arms). The double jerry can swing arm weighs 13kgs. In our current situation with the one swing arm for the one spare tyre, our total weight is approximately 55kgs. If we choose to run the two swing arms, then the total weight would be around 65kgs. This is a lot more weight hanging off the rear of the wagon and should be carefully considered as it will affect your suspension setup and overall GVM. We are guessing here but when we removed the stock Toyota rear bumper sections in total, they probably only weighed around 15kgs maximum. So, in our current setup we have reduced our payload by 40kgs; this will be 50kgs when we add a second swing arm and another spare tyre (excluding the weight of the spare wheels of course).
Dual Tyre Carrier Max 33-inch Tyres
The Uneek 4×4 rear bar is rated to carry up to a 37-inch wheel. However, you can only carry one spare wheel if you are running a setup bigger than 33-inches. If you want to carry two spare wheels, then the Uneek 4×4 rear bar will only be suitable for wheels up to 33-inches. In most cases this will be suitable for most people as legally in Queensland you can only go up to a 33-inch wheel setup unless you have engineering approval or have different rules in another State.
Most Expensive Rear Bar
At a quick glance, the Uneek 4×4 rear bar appears to be only slightly more expensive than the Kaymar bar when comparing the two with double tyre carriers. The Uneek 4×4 option costs $3,872 compared to the Kaymar option costing $3,689 (now in excess of $4,000 in 2024). However, when you factor in the cost of a towbar this difference becomes even greater as the Kaymar rear bar comes with an integrated towbar. The total cost difference goes from just under $200 to somewhere closer to $800 before any fitting costs. In comparison, the Thorburns bar is under $3,000. Now there is also the option of a rear bar from The Cruiser Company which costs $2,650 (now $3,500 2024) with two tyre carriers. We are unsure of the weight of this bar as it is not advertised and the style of it will not suit everyone. Either way, the Uneek 4×4 rear bar is the most expensive rear bar in the Australian market.
Our Final Thoughts
After almost 24 months of testing out the Uneek 4×4 rear bar on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser across all sorts of different road conditions, do we recommend buying this rear bar? This is a tough one as we have not tested out the Kaymar or other rear bars. But the biggest selling point of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar is that it is the only rear bar that allows you to open the tyre carrier with a single motion. There is no need to bend down and struggle with latches to open the tyre swing arms first and then the rear barn doors. In theory this all sounds great, but it is the one feature that causes all the issues we have had with this rear bar. The squeaking and rattling from the rear barn doors caused when the spare wheel moves because of vibrations is horrible. Our 33-inch wheels weigh close to 45kgs each, that is a lot of weight and stopping them vibrating off-road is impossible. Having the spare wheel still connected to the rear door causes too many issues. If we were to start over in our build with what we now know, we would most likely go with another brand and deal with the hassle of having to unlatch the tyre carrier first before opening the rear doors. Our advice here is go with a rear bar where the spare tyre carrier is in no way connected to the rear barn doors. Even if you still have issues with noise at least you will not have any movement in your rear doors causing large amounts of dust ingress. We can handle the noise but dust all over our rear drawers and gear is far worse. On top of this, going with say a Kaymar rear bar will save you at least $800 when factoring in the cost of a towbar. Going with other brands, such as The Cruiser Company, will save you even more. Although it appears we have now solved the noise issue by adding an additional rubber seal, this should not really be a requirement. If you do already have one of these rear bars and experience the same issues with noise and dust ingress, we would recommend fitting an additional rubber seal to try and solve these problems.
NB: 2024 UPDATE: this review was written in 2021, pricing with suppliers mentioned in this post have all since changed. We have also had some further issues occur since fitting a second tyre carrier and our last Simpson Desert crossing. I have not had the time to write about these additional problems (other than the second tyre carrier fitting) and will when I get the time. In the meantime, please send me a message if you want any additional information.
We hope you have found this unbiased, non-sponsored, and honest review of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar for the 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know by posting them at the bottom of this post, we love to get feedback from our readers.
If you would like to read more about our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser 4WD build read our posts here. Join the 4WD Adventurer community to keep up to date on our future posts here. Follow us on Instagram for more regular updates.
Thanks for reading legends.
The thoughts of Peter.
,650 (now ,500 2024) with two tyre carriers. We are unsure of the weight of this bar as it is not advertised and the style of it will not suit everyone. Either way, the Uneek 4×4 rear bar is the most expensive rear bar in the Australian market.
Our Final Thoughts
After almost 24 months of testing out the Uneek 4×4 rear bar on our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser across all sorts of different road conditions, do we recommend buying this rear bar? This is a tough one as we have not tested out the Kaymar or other rear bars. But the biggest selling point of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar is that it is the only rear bar that allows you to open the tyre carrier with a single motion. There is no need to bend down and struggle with latches to open the tyre swing arms first and then the rear barn doors. In theory this all sounds great, but it is the one feature that causes all the issues we have had with this rear bar. The squeaking and rattling from the rear barn doors caused when the spare wheel moves because of vibrations is horrible. Our 33-inch wheels weigh close to 45kgs each, that is a lot of weight and stopping them vibrating off-road is impossible. Having the spare wheel still connected to the rear door causes too many issues. If we were to start over in our build with what we now know, we would most likely go with another brand and deal with the hassle of having to unlatch the tyre carrier first before opening the rear doors. Our advice here is go with a rear bar where the spare tyre carrier is in no way connected to the rear barn doors. Even if you still have issues with noise at least you will not have any movement in your rear doors causing large amounts of dust ingress. We can handle the noise but dust all over our rear drawers and gear is far worse. On top of this, going with say a Kaymar rear bar will save you at least 0 when factoring in the cost of a towbar. Going with other brands, such as The Cruiser Company, will save you even more. Although it appears we have now solved the noise issue by adding an additional rubber seal, this should not really be a requirement. If you do already have one of these rear bars and experience the same issues with noise and dust ingress, we would recommend fitting an additional rubber seal to try and solve these problems.
NB: 2024 UPDATE: this review was written in 2021, pricing with suppliers mentioned in this post have all since changed. We have also had some further issues occur since fitting a second tyre carrier and our last Simpson Desert crossing. I have not had the time to write about these additional problems (other than the second tyre carrier fitting) and will when I get the time. In the meantime, please send me a message if you want any additional information.
We hope you have found this unbiased, non-sponsored, and honest review of the Uneek 4×4 rear bar for the 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser helpful. If you have any questions or comments, please let us know by posting them at the bottom of this post, we love to get feedback from our readers.
If you would like to read more about our 76 Series Toyota Land Cruiser 4WD build read our posts here. Join the 4WD Adventurer community to keep up to date on our future posts here. Follow us on Instagram for more regular updates.
Thanks for reading legends.
The thoughts of Peter.
13/10/2021 @ 8:41 PM
Hi
I read with interest your detailed comments on the Uneek Rear Bar. I recently purchased the same for my VDJ76 and, fitted it myself, and have a couple of suggestions / comments:
– I’ve not experienced the rattle from the rear doors, however I have glued some high density foam on the swing arm where it mates with the plastic stay. This provides some give and reduces the rattle
– I believe the dust ingress is probably a function of the rear bar not mounting plush or slightly underneath the rear of the body. Again, I used high density foam as a backing, and used the plastic trim that sat on top of the old rear bar, and I find that this helps reduce dust ingress considerably. Similar to yourselves, I have also added rubber around the door seals – probably not as much as yours as my doors close without too much effort.
– I don’t like the fact that you cannot replace the lights without taking the bar off! If they break, it would be a big job to replace them
– I have used the swing arm to mount a mobile phone aerial and a rear light. Easy to mount and looks good
– most of the mods to you car I have made to mine and it works well. I too have kept things simple and as stock as possible as I too value reliability and consider it paramount. I did the Simpson in it last year and had a ball – it was much more comfortable than my Triton (which crossed the Simpson in 2018). Happy to share some photos with you.
01/11/2021 @ 10:27 AM
G’day Steve,
Thanks for your comment mate, really appreciate your feedback and thoughts. Sorry for the late reply we have been travelling out west for the last 3 weeks and just got back.
I would love to see some photos so I will send you an email so you can shoot some through. For some reason you cannot upload photos to the comments on our posts.
It sounds like from what you have done you have eliminated the issues we have had. It is a bit crazy though that you and I have had to do some of these modifications to the Uneek 4×4 rear bar to stop some of these issues. For the money we have spent on their rear bar we should not have to add additional rubbers, foam etc to get it working correctly. I would really like to see how you have done yours to see if there is anything else we can do to improve our experience. After we just got back from another 3 weeks with plenty of gravel road driving, the additional seals we added helped somewhat, but we still got quite a lot of dust ingress through the rear door seals from all the movement in the rear door. Less than our last trip but still quite a lot. I think I am going to change the seals we added as well as the factory pinch weld and replace with some pinch weld that has rubbers seals. We will probably do this for all doors as well to help reduce road noise.
Good idea with using the rear swing arm for lights and antennas. We will probably do something similar with a mobile phone antenna as well.
I will send through an email so if you could share some photos that would be great.
Thanks mate.
Cheers,
Peter
29/07/2021 @ 4:43 PM
Hi Peter,
Thank you for your interesting articles and very constructive reviews. I have ordered a Uneek rear bar and your article has raised my concern whether to proceed. I have a standard cruiser steel split rim which is lighter than your 45kg but I still have my concerns. Out of interest did Uneek provide you support, suggestions and some means to overcome the problem? Did you consider installing a latch for the arm to the rear bar as an option to engage only for the really long and rough roads?
Thanks for your feed back, Peter
30/07/2021 @ 9:01 AM
Hi Peter,
No worries mate and thanks for your feedback, much appreciated.
Regarding Uneek support, there has been no point speaking to them about the main issue we have faced with the door moving. There is nothing they would be able to do about it as the issue is occurring as a result of the design. The big problem with it as well, is unlike other rear bars that have a latch and support low down, all the load is on the one side axle pivot. A better design would have another support in the centre of the bar where you latch it (if that makes sense). This leads to even more movement without any other support for the swing arm. Without modifying the bar I do not see how you would reduce the movement in the spare and rear door. We could modify the bar and install a latch but it will be a bit of a job and we would need to remove the bar. This might be something we consider in the future.
We have had some success with the additional rubbers we have added. See some of the new pics I just added to this post as the first effort worked but caused some other issues. The additional rubbers have made a big difference with the noise as there is a better seal. The issue is also with the Toyota seals on the rear door, they should be slightly thicker for a better sealing door. We have only done a little gravel road driving since adding the additional seals and there was little dust ingress but we will need to test this out on a long drive.
At the end of the day you are going to just have to weigh up whether you would prefer the design of the Uneek bar to easily open the rear door. If you are running much lighter tyres then you would expect less vibrations. Since writing this post and some of our social media posts, we have heard from a few people that have had similar issues. Buying one and then modifying it seems like not the best move, especially when they are not cheap. We are not going to change now that we have the Uneek bar, but if I did this again I would get a different one. But there are issues with all the other rear bars as well. The Kaymar bars are known to be really noisy, but I do not believe you get the same dust ingress issues. There are others out there that love their Uneek bars as well mate, so it is a tough one.
Don’t know if that gives you any more help mate. Let me know if you have any other questions.
Cheers,
Peter
31/07/2021 @ 9:01 AM
Hi Peter,
Thank you. We are planning some long trips WA, Central Australia , Tanami, etc on a lot of dirt so the vibration, noise and dust issues could be there. The option of modifying the arm might end up chasing your tail. It is a pity as the Uneek unit is a great concept and really well made. Hopefully they can sort the issues out in the near future.
I think I will go back to a latch design. Thorburns seems to have a lot of positive feed back in the off road clubs and mounts to the 70 series with an existing tow bar.
Thanks again for the information, Peter
02/08/2021 @ 10:07 AM
Hi Peter,
Sounds like you have some great trips planned. We are super keen to explore WA one day when we do not need to worry about border restrictions and closures. A beautiful part of the country.
Let us know how you go with the Thornburns rear bar as others would appreciate the feedback on it as another option for the 76 Series. Good luck with it all.
Cheers,
Peter
02/08/2021 @ 5:54 PM
Hi Peter,
Will keep you posted. Thorburns confirmed theirs fits 76 or 78 series that already have a Toyota or Hayman Reese tow bar. I noticed one of your readers asked this question.
I have gone for the twin arm – single spare and jerry can holder option.
I have a 78 series so will post a review once fitted and done a bit of travel – if I can eventually get out of Sydney again.
regards Peter
14/07/2021 @ 1:14 PM
Great honest review. Would not have thought of the downsides of having the wheel attached to the rear door affecting dust and/or rattle. I would have learnt the hard way. cheers
15/07/2021 @ 8:02 AM
G’day Dan
Thanks for the feedback mate, much appreciated. Unfortunately we’ve experienced a few issues and it all stems from that connection to the door. Our wheels weigh 45kgs each which is a lot of weight to support. It’s impossible to stop vibrations in that spare with all that weight, so it’s inevitable that the door will move. Just didn’t think about that when we bought one. From the feedback we’ve been getting this is a common issue with others running the Uneek 4×4 rear bar. The issues might not be as bad with smaller and lighter wheels but, you probably wouldn’t need a rear bar with smaller and lighter wheels.
Let us know if you have any questions.
Cheers
Peter
16/07/2021 @ 4:00 PM
I also have 16×8 steel rims with 285 tyres, so this will be an issue for me. Do you have any other suggestions for brands of rear bars to look at? I already have a hayman reese towbar, so am not really keen on removing that and getting a Kaymar. Also it’s very expensive. I have noted The Cruiser Company one down. Do you have any other suggestions worth looking at? cheers
16/07/2021 @ 4:22 PM
G’day Dan,
If you have a towbar then there is no point in going with Kaymar. I am not sure if they offer one without an integrated towbar, but could be worth asking the question. I am pretty sure they are all integrated though.
From what I have seen so far, The Cruiser Company rear bar is one of the better options if you like the look of it. That being said, I am not sure on what this bar weighs. They are also fairly new bars but if you are on Instagram look for a guy called Josh King (jkking76_) he has one fitted and might be able to give you some feedback. There is also an Outback Customs rear bar as well as a Raslarr option I believe. There is one more but I just can’t think of the name right now. Maybe do a few searches and see what you find.
Cheers mate.
Peter
16/07/2021 @ 9:01 PM
thanks, that gives me some good leads. cheers