After I built my low profile rear bumper, it quickly became appearant that I had to find a new place to keep my spare tire.
My spare is a 33x950R15, and even though it is a narrow tire, it still hung down too far and I kept hitting it on rocks and ledges. After the ledge in the above picture, the arms that the tire mounts up against got bent up and the tire just swung free on the chain.
Another problem was that my bumper design did not make it easy to get the crank in the winch that raises and lowers the tire.
I thought about cutting out the cross member that the spare tire mounts to, and replacing it with a low-profile one with lugs or something to hold the tire up as high as possible. However, that idea really didn't appeal to me... it was too complicated and I could just imagine having to deal with getting the tire in and out.
As a temporary solution, I simply stuck the spare in the back of my 4Runner and used a complicated system of tie downs to hold it in place up against the roll bar. At first I didn't think I'd want to keep the spare inside, however I changed my mind rather quickly. Since it is narrow, it really doesn't take up any room and I really can't see out of that side window anyway. I was concerned that my interior would smell like an old tire, but that hasn't been the case.
However, the one drawback was the complicated mess of tie-down straps I was using to secure it. I had one pulling it toward the front and one pulling it toward the rear and another pulling it into the roll bar. They would only hold it tight for a short period of time, and then they would loosen up and the tire would make this really wonderful noise rubbing against the roll bar.
I was planning on fabricating some sort of mount that would clamp to the roll bar to which I could bolt the tire to, similar to what you would find in a vehicle that came with a spare tire in the back. Again, however, that idea really didn't appeal to me. I like clean, simple solutions.
In the mean time, I had picked up a couple of ratcheting straps on sale at Harbor Freight. With these I was able to get the straps much, much tighter than I ever could with the normal tie-downs. However, I used the same configuration and the tire would still come loose. Plus, all those straps made it a chore to take the tire out and put it back in (which always needs to be done at the most inopportune time).
One day I sat down in the back of my 4Runner and gave it some thought. I needed to get a strap up high over the top of the tire. At first I looped the strap around the roll bar and hooked it to itself, but then I thought about using the hole for the optional rear seat shoulder belts.
I went to my local Ace Hardware looking for something that would fit. The threads in the roll bar are an uncommon size (7/16 fine), but the threaded sleeve goes all the way through the roll bar. So, I bought a long eyebolt and used a couple of nuts to secure it (two to keep it from loosening).
This allowed me to run a strap over the top of the tire.
And, I found that I only needed one strap to securely hold the tire in place.
The block of wood keeps the tire off the carpet and besides, is always handy to have a block of wood on hand.
Notice that I looped the short piece of the ratchet strap through the stock tie-down point and connected it back to itself. I did this to shorten that end so the ratchet would be up against the tire and not vibrate.
So far, this has been a great solution. It is clean and simple. The tire is totally out of the way and does not wiggle around anymore.