WB9YZU
NAXJA Forum User
- Location
- Madison, WI
I got spurred on a bit by Voteban's thread on a 31" in stock location and figured that I could put a 33" in the stock location...
My tire is a 33X12.50X15 on a 10" rim with some minuscule offset.
The issues I saw to this actually happening were:
1) There is no room to actually put it where the spare rode before (on a platform behind the wheel arch) because it hits the speaker housing and the seat.
2) There is no support for the wheel if you stand it up outside of that area.
So it seemed to me that the solution was to make a bracket to support the wheel, and to move the top of the seat forward.
The first thing was to lay down the seat and try and position the tire so it would not hit the hatch, then to see how close I could get it to either side.
I chose the drivers side as it was already reinforced to hold a tire.
Then I needed to build a bracket.
I started with this:
Then I added feet and mounted it to the inner fender with 1/4" Self Tapping screws:
There it is with the tire mounted:
The next thing to do was to move the upper rear seat brackets. The bracket needs to go up and forward. I fit one of the brackets to the seat, folded it back, marked the holes, and ran in some 1/4" Self Tapping screws to hold it on. I made a template, but didn't commit it to the computer yet. I would recommend that if you are going to do this mod, that you look at the Bracket that Go-Jeep made for his 32" tire mounting modification, and make something like that.
All in all, the tire fits, and is not laying all over the cargo space anymore. Gone are the ratchet straps!
I will reverse engineer the bracket later and post the drawing, but you get the jist of the idea
My tire is a 33X12.50X15 on a 10" rim with some minuscule offset.
The issues I saw to this actually happening were:
1) There is no room to actually put it where the spare rode before (on a platform behind the wheel arch) because it hits the speaker housing and the seat.
2) There is no support for the wheel if you stand it up outside of that area.
So it seemed to me that the solution was to make a bracket to support the wheel, and to move the top of the seat forward.
The first thing was to lay down the seat and try and position the tire so it would not hit the hatch, then to see how close I could get it to either side.
I chose the drivers side as it was already reinforced to hold a tire.
Then I needed to build a bracket.
I started with this:
Then I added feet and mounted it to the inner fender with 1/4" Self Tapping screws:
There it is with the tire mounted:
The next thing to do was to move the upper rear seat brackets. The bracket needs to go up and forward. I fit one of the brackets to the seat, folded it back, marked the holes, and ran in some 1/4" Self Tapping screws to hold it on. I made a template, but didn't commit it to the computer yet. I would recommend that if you are going to do this mod, that you look at the Bracket that Go-Jeep made for his 32" tire mounting modification, and make something like that.
All in all, the tire fits, and is not laying all over the cargo space anymore. Gone are the ratchet straps!
I will reverse engineer the bracket later and post the drawing, but you get the jist of the idea