Like most everyone that has done the oversized 265-75-16 tires and 6.5" wide steel wheels, we had to decide what to do about a spare as the larger tire won't fit on the Roadtrek tire carrier.
The bigger tires and wheels are the same offset but wider and bigger around so they hit the bumper on the tire outside diameter and hit the vertical support too hard to be able to tighten the bolts. The metal parts of the actual carrier are not horrible to modify, but the fiberglass disc and stainless steel band don't fit.
For quite while (years) we have gone with the smaller spare, which was sort/kinda OK with the stock 9.75" axle which was not a locker. If the flat was on the rear and you put spare on you just had to hold the speed down to not overheat the differential. We switched to a 10.5" rear axle a number of years ago and it has a auto locking rear axle that locks up if wheel rpms are too much different, and a smaller tire would probably cause it to lock up and destroy itself under some conditions, maybe all conditions, maybe only in turns. Not worth the risk, so with small spare if we got a flat on the rear we would have to do a double wheel change by putting the spare on the front and the front wheel on the rear.
After finally finding a good condition 6.5 wide wheel I decided it was time to get the right size spare.
I didn't take any pix of the in process work as it is very basic. I added about 5/8" to the vertical 2" square tube that supports the wheel to raise up the wheel further from the bumper. I added from 1/8" to 3/8" spacers to the studs that hold the wheel to make it parallel to the door and so the tire just compressed on the vertical tube enough to keep it from bouncing. No problem there at all.
The issue is the backwards orientation of the wheel on the carrier that leaves the visible rear looking at the back of the wheel and all off the carrier. Really ugly compared to original carrier/tire cover setup.
A regular tire vinyl cover doesn't work, even if you put on backwards because it also has to go over the tire carrier itself and that makes it the wrong shape.
I finally decided to try to use the original fiberglass disc, but modify it to try to cover the back facing areas like it did originally. There is nothing to hold it on, however, without the stainless band around it, so I mounted it on two 10-32 thread stand offs put on the vertical 2" support tube. To get it to fit up tight to sidewall of the tire and had to cut 1" off all the way around the outside diameter of the disc so that it just wraps a little around the curvature of the sidewall of the tire tightly to keep it from bouncing around on just the studs. We then bought a normal vinyl tire cover for the 265-75-16 tire and put it on facing the front of the van, over the good side of the wheel and all the exposed rubber of the tire. The cover goes over the disc on the back a couple of inches to blend in and cover the edge of the disc.
All done, it isn't as elegant as the stainless was, but far better than anything else I could think of. It passed DW's final inspection, which was good because she liked the old carrier look a lot. All good for everyone, and if we ever have a flat, we will be really glad we did it.
Roadtrek spare tire carrier for oversized tires
Linear Mode
