Full Sized Spare

Difficulty: 2/10

Feb 14, 2024

Brackets x2 and a way to cut them
200mm J bolt x1 or hook and eye turnbuckle
8mm bolts x2
8mm locking nuts x2
Black spray paint

Intro

Changing up wheels and tires is a super common mod, but often overlooked is making sure your spare is in good condition. More often than not the rubber is old, rotted, and unsafe to use. Rather than just changing the tire on the stock spare I opted to make it a matching spare with the same wheel and tire as the rest of my truck.

This creates a challenge on the Acty because the spare tire cage is expecting a narrow spare and my wheels are 7 to 8 inches wide. This means the cage would not be able to swing up enough to secure the spare. The good news is that changing that is actually pretty easy.

Modifying

After some quick measuring I figured I need the hinge side to drop about 3-4 inches. From there it was just a matter of making 2 brackets to lower where they mount onto the truck. Luckily the shelf brackets I used were already powder coated and the holes were pre-drilled. Just cut off the shorter side of the bracket and paint where you cut so the steel doesn’t rust. Next, attach the brackets to the cage with a couple of bolts, washers, and lock nuts.

You may need to widen the holes depending on the brackets and bolts you use

I decided that since the basket was out I may as well paint it to bring it back to life a little

Mounting

Now that everything is connected and painted you are ready to attach it to the vehicle. I recommend you put something on the ground like a piece of cardboard so you don’t scratch up your new paint. Now for the fun part - you are ready to place your full-sized spare in the basket.

You can reuse the original bolts to the threaded holes on the truck

You’ll notice that as a consequence of making the hinge longer, the hanging bolt is not not long enough to reach the locking bolt. I came up with two options in this case.

Fast & Easy - get a hook and eye turnbuckle and use that in place of the OEM setup
Slow & easy - get a J bolt that is both long enough and metric (only one I could find was shipping from England this is the slow part) to replace the old one.

I opted for the slow option because I wanted to use the cool-looking OEM nut. But since it was gonna take a while I used a turnbuckle I had laying around until then.