$20 Spare Tire Carrier
 

I've been wanting to build a swing out spare tire carrier for the back of the Explorer for a while now. Ever since I did the SAS and moved up to 33s I've had to carry my full size spare in the back hatch because it is too big to fit under the truck in the factory spot.

There are a couple of companies that make kits to make your own that would swing from the bumper but they are about $100 and then I would still have to buy all the tubing and plate to make a carrier. Plus I don't have a tube bender. so I decided just to try and find a factory one that I could modify to work with my stock bumper.

I looked at a bunch of factory style swing out carriers at the wrecking yard but the issue with all of them is they bolt to the corner of the body. That won't work on the Explorer because the upper portion of the side is part of my hatch. I had to figure a way to mount it to the bumper without spending $100+.

What I came up with was to try to make it using an old hub from one of the broken D30 axles I had in my garage. What I did was cut the wheel mount surface off and then welded a piece of 1.75 x .120 mild (ERW) tube to the hub. It looked like it would work so I then went to the wrecking yard again to find a factory carrier that I thought would work. what I ended up with was one off a Nissan Pathfinder.

I started the install by bolting the hub to the bumper. However, I found out that the top surface of my bumper isn't flat and the hub point away from the truck so when the carrier would open it would open down. So I had to cut the corner of the bumper to make it level and then reinforced the bumper to hold the weight.

Once I had that done I started on the carrier. I had a couple things that I wanted with the install. For one, I wanted to keep my rear wiper. That meant that I had to have the carrier far enough away from the body to clear it. The other was that I wanted to be able to open the rear glass without having to swing the tire out. I was able to accomplish both but it took me th entire weekend and I'm still not finished. I still have to make a mount for my military style gas can, add an additional mount to the drivers side to equal out the load when closed and finally add a strap to limit the distance it opens.

Here are some pictures Eric took of it for me this weekend. There was a lot that I did to it that I didn't mention like I moved the latch from the bottom to the top, made the spacer for the latch out of two pieces od angle iron with end caps, etc.

Nice it looks good!

Sweet, why is it off to the side?

I moved it to that side for two reasons. One, it puts the weight closer to the hub so it has less leverage when open. Two, I'm going to mount a 5 gallon gas can on the other side. Like this.

Nice, make sure you have one with one of those updated pos release valves. I've heard of people getting tickets for driving around with the old ones in their bed, and that will stick out like a sore thumb.

Nice. I need a new welder and learn how to weld better haha.