Spare Tire Dilemma

[dakrri]

I was up in the Northwood’s over the very rainy Wisconsin holiday weekend. We were off-roading and for the second time since I’ve owed my 96-LX 450, I got hung up on the spare tire and had to pulled out by my “brother in law”. Ya….you all know what kind of grap I had to put up with all weekend after that!!! He's a big chevy guy.

Is there an aftermarket spare tire carrier for a Lexus? I would like to find one that swings out-and-away when you open the tailgate. Like the old jeeps.

Dakrri

:chairshot:

[dougjohn]

Sorry to hear about the spare hanging you up. You have a couple options (there are more, but these two are what most do). The first is to get a new rear bumper from Kaymar. They have a bumpers with several options: no spindle, spindle on the left, spindle on the right, and dual spindle. The Kaymar sells a tire carrier that fits on the spindle (so in your case, you'll want one of the spindled options. The decision you have is which side you want to the tire to be on -- this is more a personal preference than anything else. Here's one link to a retailer which sells the Kaymar (they only have the dual spindle (pivot) or no spindle models):

kaymar bumper with dual pivots

I'm not sure if this option works, but it's from Kaymar too:

tire carrier for stock LC bumper

The other option you have is to get a rear bumper/tire carrier from slee offraod. Their bumper is great (I have one on mine), but a little more expensive than the Kaymar. You can check the slee rear bumper here:

slee offroad rear bumper

The guys at slee offroad are fantastic to work with and are very knowledgeable about 450s and 470s.

There are others that I know of, but as I understand it, they require you to bring the rig in for some minor modifications -- unless you're interested in driving out to Northern CA anytime soon, you'll probably want to check with Man-a-fre or Slee Offroad first.

Aside from these options, you can always have one custom made...

Good luck and keep havin' fun.

BTW, your 450 will outperform anything that Chevy/GM puts out any day of the week. :)

[dakrri]

Doug,

Thanks for the info, I'll check with Kaymar.

Dakrri

The sting is gone from all the weekend razzing that went on. Your right though…..Chevy is an inferior truck “looks, ride, and reliability”. He’s got 96,000 on his 00 Suburban and it recently had a new motor put in.

[ellieoh]

I also saw www.sleeoffroad.com had manufactured a bracket to mount the spare tire securely inside the truck, not a bad option if you have the space.

[dougjohn]

They're no longer selling that tire carrier. I think they only made 2 or 3 total. Not real big sellers. Not a bad concept though. A buddy of mine owns one of them -- he seems to like it, but that tire inside the cargo area eats up a bunch of space :(