Spare Tire....How many of you carry one?
I have a spare but it is heavy. I need to weigh it but probably around 70#. I have to carry it in a storage compartment and it takes up quite a bit of space. I know having a spare tire is essenti...
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My rig came with a spare mounted on a winch underneath, behind the rear axle. It came with the requisite lug wrench, but not with a jack that I've ever found. The chassis manual is not very helpful with locating the jack on a motorhome; it just says that (on the van body) it's somewhere tucked in a corner near the hinge on one of the rear doors.
I now have a bottle jack and wheel chocks, and can change a wheel without too much drama. On an E-450, an impact wrench is not essential to change the wheel; the lug nuts are torqued to only 140 ft-lbs, not too hard to handle with any halfway decent breaker bar or similar, of course depending on one's physical abilities. If you can't lift the wheel up into position on the hub (and they are kind of heavy and difficult to manage), then it's a moot point whether the lug nuts can be loosened or not.
If you have one of the older E-450 or even older E-SuperDuty chassis with the transmission mounted parking brake, a set of wheel chocks are absolutely positively essential if you're going to be jacking up one of the back wheels. Without a wheel chocked, you have no brakes holding the rig in position if one of the rear wheels loses traction. Whee chocks should, of course, be used anytime one jacks up a corner of any vehicle, but it's doubly important in this case.
For emergency use, I would not hesitate to drive carefully on a spare that is old provided it's not in obviously dilapidated and completely unsafe condition. One presumably isn't going to drive cross-country on the spare at highway speeds, but rather just get to someplace for proper repairs or whatever to be made.
I now have a bottle jack and wheel chocks, and can change a wheel without too much drama. On an E-450, an impact wrench is not essential to change the wheel; the lug nuts are torqued to only 140 ft-lbs, not too hard to handle with any halfway decent breaker bar or similar, of course depending on one's physical abilities. If you can't lift the wheel up into position on the hub (and they are kind of heavy and difficult to manage), then it's a moot point whether the lug nuts can be loosened or not.
If you have one of the older E-450 or even older E-SuperDuty chassis with the transmission mounted parking brake, a set of wheel chocks are absolutely positively essential if you're going to be jacking up one of the back wheels. Without a wheel chocked, you have no brakes holding the rig in position if one of the rear wheels loses traction. Whee chocks should, of course, be used anytime one jacks up a corner of any vehicle, but it's doubly important in this case.
For emergency use, I would not hesitate to drive carefully on a spare that is old provided it's not in obviously dilapidated and completely unsafe condition. One presumably isn't going to drive cross-country on the spare at highway speeds, but rather just get to someplace for proper repairs or whatever to be made.
