Spare tire access

With spare mounted on the hitch, you sure need 5500 truck for the load.
The 100 lb spare mounted 5 feet behind rear axle adds like 150-170 lb to rear axle load.
For some time I was shopping around for front brush guard with spare wheel rack.
The one I liked not only cost north of $2,000 but also weight over 200lb.
But for those who have problem with rear axle overloading, that might be valid option.

Mine sets on top of the SuperTruss:



But used to be attached to the headache rack:

My spare is in the basement. Nice and dry and easy to get at.

I found a bolt head that fit in there perfectly so I can place the shank in a small cordless drill and raise and lower it that way, but my camper rear overhang does not drop down in the way in the rear.

I once had a flat in the snow. Believe me, bringing a tarp to lay on while using the jack and getting the spare was a good thing.

Stevenal wrote:
Z-Peller wrote:

Unless you have a very light camper, you will have to undo tiedowns and raise camper 6” or so on jacks to take weight off truck to jack it up.


Good thing I have a camper with jacks and not a load of gravel. I've looked through the truck manual, and nowhere does it state the truck needs to be unloaded prior to jacking. I would think that failure to provide a jack suitable for the GVWR, or suitable warnings regarding unloading wouldn't get past the legal review.

You may have a valid point, but I subcribe to the old adage " an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure"....I have changed an inside dually on the road with my camper on, and only the OEM jack to lift it with. No way I'm sticking my head and shoulders under that fender relying on OEM jack just because there was nothing in the owners manual saying I couldn't. Camper has electric jacks, so seemed a no brainer to me.

On my F350 SRW I used the factory jack with the Lance 1055 still in the bed when I had a belt separation and the rear Toyo tire disintegrate on I5 after that I bought a 20 ton bottle jack. It really was not difficult to change the dang tire.

Ours was still accessible but I had to use an adjustable wrench instead of the crank handle.

Edit: I think a ratchet actually fit into the end of the tubes so I used that. It wasn’t painful whatever I ended up doing.

My F250 still had the spare tire winch hole accessible with the Arctic Fox loaded. Using the extension rod with the crank allowed me to raise or lower the spare and then drive forward or back to retrieve or store the spare. I did not trust the OEM bottle jack with 7000+ lbs on the rear, so I bought a 20t bottle jack that also had better reach and less effort involved than the screw bottle. Those with more than 2' of rear overhang usually dismount the winch and remount it 90 degrees so the crank can be inserted in the passenger rear wheel well.

Z-Peller wrote:
Unless you have a very light camper, you will have to undo tiedowns and raise camper 6” or so on jacks to take weight off truck to jack it up.

Good thing I have a camper with jacks and not a load of gravel. I've looked through the truck manual, and nowhere does it state the truck needs to be unloaded prior to jacking. I would think that failure to provide a jack suitable for the GVWR, or suitable warnings regarding unloading wouldn't get past the legal review.

Spare tire handle extension

Sincerely, Dave.