Spare Tire Mounted Under Trailer?

Not too hard, insert hoist rod and lower tire check pressure raise it back up. I guess I am pretty bad in this area of maintenance I think I have only checked the spare once in 5 years....

Sport45 wrote:
How difficult is it to check the pressure before a trip?

If you bring a tire pump, this isn't nearly so worrisome. I have to admit it took me about 20 minutes and the foot pump was quite hot, but I did inflate my 10 year spare.

How difficult is it to check the pressure before a trip?

No I have a toy hauler so no bumper... I use to carry the spare around in the back of my truck. One time I forgot to put the spare in and did not have a spare for the weekend and luckily did not need it. Now it goes where the trailer goes..

Durn, but that's a lot of work when you could have just put it on the rear bumper. Do you still have to slide underneath it to get to the tire after you've lowered it and have to unhook it?

Done....Turned out to be a little more work than I planned. I picked up the hoist at the local auto salvage you pull for $20. I wanted one off a Ford so the jack handle from my truck would fit both the trailer and the truck... I found one on a ford half ton that had the bed removed and it was just two bolts and off.

Where I went wrong was on the truck the winch is on top of the frame so the bolts holes are facing DOWN. I wanted to bolt to the bottom of my floor so I needed the bolt holes up.. Problem one. I had to make new brackets that I bolted and welded to the other end of the hoist. Got it mounted and tried it out and the Y that goes through the hole in the wheek was TOO SMALL because it was for a half ton not a 3/4 ton Problem #2. I had to make a bracket out of angle iron that I welded togeher and bolted to the wheel... Now back to cranking it up.. The hoist does not like the rod at a angle it almost has to be straight So I was only able to use half the rod and still had to climb under the trailer to winch up the tire.. Problem 3.. I will drill a 9/16" hole in the frame rail so I can insert the jack rod straight through to the hoist. All in all a good days work but it came out pretty good. I did try the string suggestion for ground clearance and I still had 3 1/2" of room left..

Here are some pics.

The Hoist


The Bracket


On the way up


Up!

Pretty sure you're good.

FYI - Our undermount spare on the 5er centered 8.5ft from rear axle, 3.5ft from back of trailer. It has 14" clearance.

I put ours under the 5er on the "Hide A Spare" just behind the rear axle and very satisfied with it. :)

Stretch a string between the bottom of the tire and the edge of the bumper or whatever hangs down the most. If the tire is above that (accounting for possible suspension deflection, if you want to be all scientific-y about it), you have practically no chance of it hitting stuff as you haven't altered the departure angle.

11" is quite a good bit of clearance. My car (a Honda Fit) has just about exactly half that clearance underneath it, and that's adequate for just about anything that sort of resembles a road. (It's also shorter, which is an advantage, but still...)

That's where my factory spare tire mount is and I haven't had any problems with it. I haven't measured it though to see how far off the ground it is.