Question about rear door spare carrier

[Boston]

In my rebuild that's currently underway I removed the existing rear door carrier in favor of a Mantec unit.

[Revtor]

My thought is that if you want a rear mounted spare, you should fab/buy a swing away spare mount. Tie it in to the rear crossmember That would be the best way. One big trailer axle as the hinge welded to a mount on the rear crossmember. Something like this, but put it on a rover crossmember instead of the bumper pictured.
http://www.central4wd.com/_files/_im...3_XJSWING1.jpg

Or take your rear door apart and add some bracing to the frame. At least you could make a bigger mounting plate to spread the load around a bit. Alternately, if you had some rubber bumpers mounted to the door so when you put the spare on the mount, it tightened against the rubbers a bit, it would eliminate alot of bouncing and shaking, limiting the fatigue of the alum. . ?

All options are a PITA, but we should learn from the pic above so we don't end up with a door like wolf323's.!

~Steve

[tmckeon88]

I have mine mounted inside the truck behind the front seats, where that bracket is. It reduces the inside space a little bit, but I rarely ever have to totally fill up the inside of the truck. This way it's out of the sun and weather and won't be a dirty, corroded mess if I ever have to use it. Knock on wood, the BFGs I've been running have never gone flat, although I don't do much off roading.

I agree the rear door is flimsy for a good size spare wheel, even with the 3rd hinge, which I have. The bonnet mount restricts vision and means you have a 90-lb overhead press to do every time you want to raise the hood to check the oil or whatever. You might be able to rig up an inside mount on top of one of the wheel wells on the side, just sacrifice visibility out the right hand rear windows, which isn't too much. I have a plain old Series IIA 88".

Tom

[busboy]

I have mine mounted inside the truck behind the front seats, where that bracket is. It reduces the inside space a little bit, Tom

I have tried mine there but there isn't room to fold down the rear seats.

[mearstrae]

Other uses for the rear mounts? There used to be tool mounts available for the rear door, these mounted a pick and shovel and I've also seen ones that included an axe. I have the "Official" Land Rover pick, shovel and axe, but I haven't located the tool bracketing to put them on my SIII. Also my rear door has been reenforced with an overlay of aluminum checker plate, so no worries there.

'95 RRC Lwb
'76 Series III Hybrid
'70 Rover 3500S